![]() The expanding collection of connected things goes mostly unnoticed by the public – sensors, actuators and other items completing tasks behind the scenes in day-to-day operations of businesses and government, most of them abetted by machine-to-machine “computiction” – that is, artificial-intelligence-enhanced communication. The Internet of Things (IoT) is in full flower. The stickiness and value of a connected life will be far too strong for a significant number of people to have the will or means to disconnect. Today, 49% of the world’s population is connected online and an estimated 8.4 billion connected things are in use worldwide. ![]() These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies – even our dreams.” It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. This skin is already being stitched together. It will use the internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. In 1999, 18 years ago, when just 4% of the world’s population was online, Kevin Ashton coined the term Internet of Things, Neil Gershenfeld of MIT Media Lab wrote the book “ When Things Start to Think,” and Neil Gross wrote in BusinessWeek: “In the next century, planet Earth will don an electronic skin.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |