So what is this 'internet of things'? I like to address this frequently asked question by stepping back to look at the six webs that Bill Joy (MIT, 1995) before the internet became mainstream:
1. The Near Web: This is the Internet that you see when you lean over a screen - like a laptop.
2. The Here Web. This is the Internet that is always with you because you accesses it through a device you always carry - like a cell phone.
3. The Far Web. This is the Internet you see when you sit back from a big screen - like a television or a kiosk. [now including internet enabled media player and digital video recorders]
4. The Weird Web. This is the Internet you access through your voice and which you listen to - say when you are in your car, or when you talk to an intelligent system on your phone, or when you ask your camera a question. [Apple's Siri, Google Voice, interactive voice recognition with artificial intelligence for natural language processing]
5. B2B. This is an Internet which does not possess a consumer interface, where business machines talk to other business machines. It is chatter of corporations amongst themselves when they do not care about their human drones. [APIs for Salesforce, Amazon, SAP, Sharepoint, etc.]
6. D2D. This is the Internet of sensors deployed in mesh networks, adjusting urban systems for maximum efficiency. Joy says that it will embed machine intelligence in ordinary, daily life. [traffic speed sensors, energy meters, bus stops, etc.]
For some, the internet of things simply extends the internet ('the web') to include devices. For others, it's about machines talking to each other via a common network. For me, it is both of these and a lot more.
My definition for the internet of things is the inter-connection of all the things mentioned in Bill Joy's list above overlaid with an information network to form an internet of services (IoS).
Networked devices and machines have existed for decades as proprietary connected machine-to-machine (M2M) bespoke solutions, e.g. telephone connected alarms and GSM connected truck terminals. What is new with the internet of things is the emergence of standards allowing interconnection and inter-operability between devices, information hubs and service brokers. This means that you will be able to create services that traverse manufacturers, applications and industries. Plug and play. This opens up an infinite number of possibilities. That's why so many companies are anxious to gain first mover advantage, establish themselves as a leader and work with creative start-ups to explore new ideas. I believe we are still at an early point on the market adoption S-curve for the internet of things.
So why would we want to connect everything to the internet and create services spanning different products and companies? When people first heard of electricity and telegraphy, they also wondered what the new innovations were for. Today, we depend on the very same technologies for our livelihood. The internet of things is likely to follow a similar pattern and we will see this connected technology evolve and spread into many all areas of life.
Here are my pointers for what you can expect from the internet of things in the near future:
- Consumer electronics: devices connecting to each other and to common human interfaces.
- Location and context aware services: personalised services that follow the user to offer relevant services for the current context.
- X-as-a-Service (XaaS): continued evolution of metered on-demand services consumed anywhere from any device.
- Work and social networks: context-driven networks automatically assembling and presenting information to support the user in real-time.
- 'Smart' controls: municipal services controlled by aggregate data and distributed sensors.
- Natural Language Processing: ubiquity of connected things will require better voice control interfaces to make services more accessible to users.
Watch Dr. John Barrett's IoT presentation for further inspiration and let your mind wander into the future.