Presented by Kevin Ashton, Author and Co-Founder of Auto ID Center at MIT
The Internet of Things got started in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the late 1990s and early 2000s. During that time my colleagues and I would talk about the technological possibilities that awaited us in the future. We coined the term ‘internet of things’ and shared our predictions with people, who told us we sounded ridiculous. As it turns out, our predictions actually weren’t ridiculous enough.
Today we sit with sophisticated computers in our pockets. We call them smart ‘phones’ but really the phone call is just one of many apps and capabilities. We take pictures with high definition cameras, text, tweet, play Angry Birds, access the internet, make purchases, email and so much more. These are all things we take for granted today, but if you look at how far we’ve come in such a short period of time, these monotonous things are actually very miraculous.
Predicting the future is about looking at what we have now and trying to zoom in from there. Think about the first fuzzy picture you took with your very first cell phone and compare it with the pictures you can take with your smartphone today. Technological prediction is about dreaming what the picture will look like next year, with the next generation phone. To contemplate the future, you must have a firm understanding of both the past and the present.
Computers Interacting with the World
The technology that was the foundation of the internet of things is RFID – radio frequency identification. It is the basis of IoT because it allowed computers to identify the things around them in the world. Although smartphones are the most dominant form of computers in the world today, RFID tags are currently more abundant and cheaper.
In 2012 there were just under 3 billion smartphones made and sold, but that same year nearly 4 billion RFID tags were produced and sold. That pattern has continued, and each year about a billion more RFID tags are sold than smartphones. While smartphones cost hundreds of dollars and need a service plan, RFID tags average just under four cents each.
RFID tags have a variety of uses today. They can be used to sense cars on the toll road, parts on a production line, and they are even used at Disney Park – magic RFID bands that allow you to pay for things and access certain areas.
What is interesting is that RFID tags do not need an energy source. They do use energy. However, they get that energy from the radio wave that is communicating with them. They typically don’t have a battery and don’t need to be plugged in and charged up.
This demonstrates that we already live in a world where many computers can ‘power themselves’ so to speak. My prediction is that this trend will continue and most computers will be able to power themselves within 20 years. Going off Cummy’s Law, which states that the amount of energy and electricity required to form a computation has halved every 1.5 years since computing was invented, our devices are requiring less energy over time. In the future, we will be able to do more with devices that can harvest power (via radio waves, vibrations in the room, light, etc.) or have such a long-lasting onboard battery that it will never have to be changed.
Computers Gathering (and Processing) Data
Until recently, information technology had a fundamental limitation: it depended on human beings to give it its data. The kind of information that computers processed was the kind that could be entered using a keyboard. Things have gotten more complex, and the kind of information we have to manage today is the kind that can’t be easily entered using a keyboard. Today’s information is detailed, hard to observe, and changes in real time, necessitating a system for automatically capturing data instead of manually entering it.
The first successful example of automatic data capture was the bar code. Although ubiquitous today, the bar code was also miraculous – when first developed it was hard to print accurately and it required a laser or high-resolution camera to read.
So the idea around the internet of things is not just sensing technology, like RFID which can interact with the world, but connecting that sensing technology and automatic data capture to the internet. By doing so, we can have our computers gather information about the real world for themselves then look at the data and solve problems.
There is a hurdle we have to overcome in this area, though. We have moved from a system where computers not only gather the data but also process it and make decisions – and many people are not yet ready to let go of their decision-making power.
For example, those who reject the idea of a self-driving car believe that they are best at controlling the vehicle and making driving decisions – regardless of the fact that there are thousands of vehicular deaths each year caused by ‘human error.’ On the other hand, a driverless car has radars that can see a 360-degree view, sense at least two dimensions, then use machine learning and the computer to combine all the information to figure out what is going on and react accordingly. After thousands of tests, there has only been one major accident. The self-driving car prototypes have already proven that computers are better drivers than humans.
Another example is what happens in the workplace. Companies spend large sums of money on systems that gather data on their customers, their supply chain, and other important elements of the business. A junior employee generates a report from the system, turns it into a pie chart, and puts it into a PowerPoint presentation. A meeting is scheduled where executives look at the chart, try to think what it means, then make a decision that will be eventually implemented next month.
This is 20th-century thinking. The 21st century is all about real-time, automatic data streaming and processing where decisions can happen automatically from machine learning systems.
A Final Prediction
So far I have offered a glimpse of the past, present, and future of the internet of things, but there is one more important prediction to share: there are going to be players in YOUR industry who are using automated data capture and processing tools to gain an advantage. In fact, it could be happening at this very moment. YOU have a choice whether to adopt these latest developments and take full advantage of the internet of things. You can embrace the future today and become an industry leader. Or you can call these things ridiculous and fall behind. The choice is yours.
“It’s because of this technology, this transition from miraculous to monotonous.”
“The challenge today is managing the information.”
“There are going to be players in your industry who are using automated data capture tools and automated data processing tools to gain an advantage.”