whenever I see a headline of the formula, "What's next in X" I immediately think to myself, "probably not what this article thinks it is."
That said, yeah, some of the handwriting is on the wall. I think IoT will be the next big hit, not because people want it or will use any of it, but because that's all anyone is going to be selling. Samsung, LG, GE, et al. aren't going to give us a choice.
It won't be a big dramatic change like self-driving cars. It will be a slow trickle of toaster fridges that we don't notice until we are out trying to replace a washing machine one day and can't find one without a self-ironing board attached that wants to connect to our bed to know when to wake up the coffee pot that makes your egg-white substitute omelet and makes sure your shirt is wrinkle free at exactly the moment your shower dries you off and combs your hair.
And while all of us nerds are busy disabling all that crap so we can just clean some underwear, Wall Street will be declaring that IoT is here and winning! What they won't mention is that it's winning because there's nothing else left to buy.
I don't agree. There are plenty of things in my life that could be hooked up to some online AI to make them smarter.
Anything with a lock. Just figure out that I'm me and open. If I leave lock up. Open up for anyone on my authorised list.
More cameras pointed at stuff. Our local club (100 members) purchased a weather station and decent camera and pointed it at the sea so we can all check the wind and surf. Cool. More of these cheaper please.
We have Woo devices that we attach to kiteboards, these measure jump height, duration and G force. These are then synced to a phone and internet, so not quite IoT but close. More of these please. Attach them to anything that moves (shoes, kites, surfboards, swim fins, soccer balls, bike) more data is fun.
GoPros, most people I know have these. They need to be better hooked up to the internet.
I think there are a ton of IoT that will make sense and people will buy. Just because you don't see the value in a toaster hooked up to the 'net, doesn't mean the IoT is dumb. I think it's great.
The big problem I have with IoT is that none of this requires online AI. What part of having an authorized list or identifying you requires internet access?
The IoT will take off when services are run on site. When the processing power is available from a small appliance box and companies advertise security and reliability associated with local processing it will catch on.
What happens to your smart lock of your internet connection goes out? What about if the server that holds your whitelist is compromised?
Exactly. If there's one thing I hate about the direction of tech these days, it's this headlong rush to gratuitously shackle all of our previously-independent devices to a mesh of online services. My bike lock (to use this example) should NOT require an internet connection, and should not depend on some web service (run by a super trendoid startup which might not exist in six months time) to fulfill its function.
And don't get me started on phone apps which shift some trivial processing off into "the cloud" as a thinly veiled excuse to upload all of your personal data to the company's servers so they can then flog your details off to some advertising company.
I can see value in internet access. The lock having internet access means I can be on vacation in Thailand and grant a friend access to my house to drop off the rent check I left on the counter. And later, I can make sure my friend didn't forget. Or, make sure my dog-sitter is showing up. I also can't think of a more convenient way to grant access and identify people off-hand.
As for the connection going out, there are solutions. Redundant cellular connections, maybe? And if you really can't get in, it's not the end of the world. We already have solutions for that: locksmiths. Might be expensive though, and end up destroying the device, or maybe your door.
The data security thing is really bad. Unfortunately, that's a much larger problem though, not really related just to IoT.
I guess more broadly, I was thinking about a scenario in which the lock device dies, and making the point that conventional devices aren't foolproof either. In this case, the fool being me, and the proof being locking my keys in the house.
So, any lock can fail, but I'm not really concerned as long as it has a reasonably low failure rate. We've tolerated conventional lock systems failing (via user error mostly) for a long time.
> I don't agree. There are plenty of things in my life that could be hooked up to some online AI to make them smarter.
But "online AI" is just a code-word for "some company, probably the manufacturer, that owns the IP rights". I don't want my household stuff to phone home and report all my actions to Some Company. I think that, for instance, my sandwich toaster thingy should toast sandwiches without reporting the weight or density of them.
>more data is fun.
More data is not fun. More data is Big Brother, particularly when the device itself has a closed-source hardware design, closed-source firmware, closed-source software, and a closed-off "shiny" user interface. More programmability with less phoning home is fun.
Smart water sprinkler controllers seem generally useful. I used to forget to use our non-smart controller's "rain delay" all the time.
We also have an alert system setup to let us know when the outside temperature would meet the heating or cooling requirements of the thermostat. This is pretty useful in southern California.
A single switch to kill all your lights when you leave/go to bed is useful. But at $35 per smart switch you're going to shell out a lot of cash for this convenience.
My biggest issue with IoT as it is currently evolving is how reliant on the manufacturer they are to keep working. I would be surprised to see some of these devices working in 5 years, much less 20 or 30.
I'm surprised we haven't seen more brainstorming about how we can make these devices (now and future) less reliant on individual companies whether they're start-ups or giants.
Maybe an open standard that is provided as part of your ISP package but can be moved from one to another?
If no people want or will use IoT connected devices, what motivation do companies have to sell only IoT devices? I don't understand the logic behind this prediction (only IoT products available, but no one wants them). It seems a bit like predicting that in the future people will still prefer to write on paper, but no companies will sell paper anymore, only tablets. Maybe there's a key motivating factor I'm missing?
Because It'll let those same companies better understand you and thus better target you with advertisements for more products (or sell the data to others who want to sell to you).
Don't think for a second that that smart fridge that knows when you're running low on milk knows just so that it can alert you and be done with it. Most people will buy the thing and agree to an unreadable set of terms that allow them to use your data for advertising purposes without much thought. Then the fridge notices that you're low on milk and tells you "Hey, you're low on milk! Lucky for you, Target's got your favorite brand for 10% off with this coupon." You pay Target and Target pays FridgeCo.
They're motivated to sell this stuff whether or not you want it because it lets them build revenue streams in markets that they wouldn't otherwise have access to. The buyers of the information are motivated to pay for it because it means that they can learn far more about the individuals, not just the groups of individuals, who buy their products.
Because with IoT companies move consumers from owning the devices they buy to renting them. The company retains control of how the device is used, what content it displays, even if the device works or not. You make the consumers buying the device wholy dependent on being in the good graces of the company for their expensive device to not become a brick.
Big executive hears about it, thinks its 'the next big thing' and poors money into it. A second big executive hears that the previous company is doing it and they have to stay competitive. Their next flagship product has it and coincidentally does well. They attribute it to IoT and all of their products have it in a year. Then it spreads across the industry and no one has choice anymore.
I don't think multinational corporations are going to change their entire product line entirely on the basis of gossip about "the next big thing". Maybe some would, but surely not all. A decision like that would have to be made after doing some serious market research and testing sales of products with that feature against sales of products without it. If corporation A switched to only IoT devices and customers didn't want that, surely Corporation B which hasn't made the switch would gain more market share, then A would take note and switch back. There's too much money to be made by being the one company that still offers what consumers want. I don't understand this fear that profit-driven corporations will suddenly decide to add costly features in a world where no one wants them.
The history of consumer computing - especially the existence of the word "crapware" - suggests the opposite happens.
Corps tend to offer what execs think consumers want, based on a consumer model which is irrationally similar to an idealised version of the exec - who inevitably seems to think more is better, for very noisy values of "more".
Which is why printer driver installers, smartphones, operating systems, and hardware products all acquire barnacle encrustations of crapware that literally no consumer wants.
IoT could easily be more susceptible to this than desktop and mobile computing.
Corps that truly understand their customers are incredibly rare. Many corps seem to get along by throwing crap at the wall and hoping some of it sticks.
Genuine customer insight is practically a superpower.
We already have a great example. Look at all the money car companies are now pouring into self-driving cars. In reality, it's all marketing hype. Google's Self-Driving Cars are a decade from practicality, they're far more dangerous than human drivers if left to their own devices. We're actually not that much far further in automated driving than we were five years ago. But now that it's a topic of hype, everyone's dumping tens of millions into it.
Sure, we'll make some progress, but we might also be looking that this generation's version of the flying car. The magical leap forward in technology we keep believing is just around the corner.
Do you really think all the recent progress in autonomous vehicles is marketing hype? I disagree that we haven't come a long way in the last 5 years. Self driving cars are a lot more practical than the flying car.
Almost every excited "self-driving cars are coming soon!" post quotes a single man. Chris Urmson, the lead of Google's project. He avoids mentioning the real limitations and roadblocks self-driving cars has, and continually talks about how he never wants his son to have a driver's license. He talks more fluff than substance, and he's misrepresented Google's progress pretty heavily. He's a great marketing voice for Google, but I have found very little merit to what he has to say.
When you actually look at the hard numbers, or other companies' more realistic progress reports, it paints a very different picture.
I've found that to be true as well. Driverless cars can work reliably in a strictly controlled environment such as the Google campus gated community, but have very little chance of reliable functioning in the real, gritty world full of variables and uncertainties.
Worse yet, driverless cars will be forced to make tough ethical choices. Imagine a driverless car's brakes fail and it is headed for a pregnant woman. Should a car steer off the road and possibly kill the passenger(s) in order to save the pregnant woman? Who gets to decide what is the correct choice?
What you've ironically described is home automation facilitated by IoT.
Cheap IoT devices can be installed just about any manufacturing and agricultural device. Heck, you'll be able to monitor each individual plant health. Your car will be able to notify of failing components before they actually failed (FFT and irregular frequency monitoring).
Well, that's the dream IoT is selling. But the reality is that most of it won't work. The big brands that the vast majority of consumers recognize and are willing to buy and can afford are simply not competent to deliver the dream.
They will make the devices work just well enough to gather your personal data and stop there. For most of the rest of our lifetimes, IoT will be the same shitshow of incompatible nightmares as plug-and-play was for Windows throughout most of the 90s.
But it will win, and it will be the next big thing for a similar reason: not because it's good or because it works well, but because that's all anyone is selling.
Yup. I found when I took on doing home automation for myself, it involved a lot more electrical work, and a lot more code than the consumer is up for, to make it do what I actually want. The one-off consumer devices inspire the dream but don't deliver on it.
Yes, we recently talked about IoT devices here at work, but the thing is, it wasn't ignited by people who had even heard or knew the "IoT" moniker. It's hard to tell what will be a hit from my world since I'm so deep into IT that I often lack the perspective, but that one was a good test of how it's already been entering consumer mindsets.
That said, yeah, some of the handwriting is on the wall. I think IoT will be the next big hit, not because people want it or will use any of it, but because that's all anyone is going to be selling. Samsung, LG, GE, et al. aren't going to give us a choice.
It won't be a big dramatic change like self-driving cars. It will be a slow trickle of toaster fridges that we don't notice until we are out trying to replace a washing machine one day and can't find one without a self-ironing board attached that wants to connect to our bed to know when to wake up the coffee pot that makes your egg-white substitute omelet and makes sure your shirt is wrinkle free at exactly the moment your shower dries you off and combs your hair.
And while all of us nerds are busy disabling all that crap so we can just clean some underwear, Wall Street will be declaring that IoT is here and winning! What they won't mention is that it's winning because there's nothing else left to buy.