“How the world will change as computers spread into everyday objects,” is the title of the lead article in a comprehensive review of the Internet of Things (IoT) in a recent issue of The Economist. Like many technological advances, IoT has been long in coming. Ubiquitous or Pervasive Computing dates back to the 1990s, when neither the necessary low-cost devices and wireless networks were anywhere near ready. “But the transformation is about to go into overdrive, notes The Economist. “One forecast is that by 2035 the world will have a trillion connected computers, built into everything from food packaging to bridges and clothes.”
IoT promises to bring many benefits, including a whole new generation of innovative products. We’ve long thought of products as physical entities built with a combination of mechanical and electrical components, - e.g., appliances, cars, agricultural machines, industrial equipment, - some quite simple and some highly complex. IoT has been ushering a whole new class of smart connected products. In addition to mechanical and electrical components, these new products use digital components like microprocessors, sensors, data storage, software, and connectivity in a wide variety of ways.
As the world’s digital and physical infrastructures converge, digital technologies are being designed right into all kinds of consumer and industrial products. Internet-connected smart doorbells, for example, include motion sensors and video cameras that notify a home owner when someone arrives at the door. Using a smartphone app, the home owner can watch and talk to the visitor, while a video of their interaction is saved for an added level of security.
“The magic of computers is that they provide in a machine an ability - to calculate, to process information, to decide - that used to be the sole preserve of biological brains,” writes The Economist. “The IoT foresees a world in which this magic becomes ubiquitous. Countless tiny chips will be woven into buildings, cities, clothes and human bodies, all linked by the internet… Over the past century electricity has allowed consumers and businesses at least in the rich world, access to a fundamental, universally useful good - energy - when and where they needed it. The IoT aims to do for information what electricity did for energy.”
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