We Are All Things in the Internet of Things

By Ray Gallon | Senior Member

“When wireless is perfectly applied, the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole…. And the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”

—Nikola Tesla, interviewed in Colliers Magazine, 30 January 1926, by John B. Kennedy

The idea is so simple—everything is connected to everything. The implications are enormous. A totally interconnected system opens multiple infinities of possible communications paths. It operates at levels of complexity that not only boggle the individual mind, they surpass even the ability of groups of knowledgeable people to comprehend the ramifications. Yet the world’s most forward-looking companies are already investing heavily in a technology that is no longer a future vision, it’s a reality, and spreading at lightning speeds.

When Kevin Ashton used the term Internet of Things for the first time in 1999, he put the accent on giving each object a unique identity using RFID technology, to save time and reduce waste by taking the responsibility of entering data and gathering information away from humans. According to Ashton, objects that talk to each other would do so faster and safer, and would contact data centers via wireless communications to optimize processes.

Today’s idea of the Internet of Things (IoT) extends well beyond “faster and safer,” and includes notions of artificial intelligence and machine autonomy.

We Are All “Things” in the Internet of Things

The following characteristics are generally defined as necessary for the Internet of Things to function:

• Objects are uniquely identifiable (via technologies like RFID)
• They can be virtually represented in an Internet-like structure
• They are open, with common protocols connecting them
• Information about them is available worldwide: location, tracking, context, global tendencies, user profiles, etc.
• Interaction between objects can be automated, via machine-to-machine (M2M) networks

A “thing” in the IoT can include living beings, as in this explanation by Ivy Wigmore, a contributor to the information site whatis.com:

“A thing, in the Internet of Things, can be a person with a heart monitor implant, a farm animal with a biochip transponder, an automobile that has built-in sensors to alert the driver when tire pressure is low—or any other natural or man-made object that can be assigned anIP address and provided with the ability to transfer data over a network.”

These things can also be equipped with their own processors and with decision-making capabilities.

It is becoming obvious that, although most of our understanding of the use of technology by human beings has been a voluntary and conscious activity, today we are entering a scenario where we are less and less conscious of actions and decisions taken by technological objects without human intervention. As Max Weiser of Xerox PARC says, “The most profound technologies are those that disappear.”

Smart Houses

The most common example (and the most banal) of the IoT is the idea of a smart house, where, for example, your windows open and close, and your shades and shutters adjust according to the angle of the sun, the temperature, and the parameters of comfort you’ve given to the equipment. But also, those same windows call the police and your insurance company because one has been broken, and the system lets you know about it at the same time.

Your smart house is equipped with a smart refrigerator. You buy an IoGurt (Internet of Yogurt) that is identified individually with a particular code. It has a nanochip that can be tracked by your smartphone. As you walk in the door with it, sensors in the doorframe immediately check the phone and send the information to the Smart fridge. The refrigerator, in turn, tells you if the yogurt is spoiled, either because the “best by” date has passed, or as a result of chemical analysis once you’ve put the yogurt into the refrigerator. Either the refrigerator sends you a text message that you need to take the yogurt back, or it just connects to the supermarket to order more and process the credit, and it is the supermarket that tells you you’re going to have more yogurt delivered by the afternoon.

A New Kind of Big Data

But smart houses are a tiny dot on the IoT landscape. According to Matt Asay, 90 percent of the world’s data was generated in the last two years alone, much of it by machines. Part of the goal of IoT developers is to create value by making sense of that data. And there’s a lot of value to be created. Cisco’s analysts (Joseph Bradely et al.) have provided these estimates of what’s at stake in different IoT applications:

• Smart factories: $1.95 trillion
• Connected marketing and advertising: $1.95 trillion
• Smart [electrical] grid: $757 billion
• Connected gaming and entertainment: $635 billion
• Smart buildings: $349 billion
• Connected commercial ground vehicles: $347 billion
• Connected healthcare and patient monitoring: $106 billion

According to Bill Ruh, vice president and global technology director at General Electric, the future of the Internet is industrial—not surprising given the areas where General Electric is active. Ruh says that it’s “about building new software and analytics that can extract and make sense of data where it never existed before—such as within machines.”

By integrating sensor-based data into networks and the Internet, we are not only connecting thousands of objects that will be able to exchange information on their own. We are, in fact, creating a whole layer of virtual knowledge based of what these objects can identify, reproduce, or interpret from the real world, through millions of open channels, sensors, and devices that are getting smaller, smarter, and cheaper.

Big Data in this virtual knowledge layer will become the new currency of a content economy, and it raises a number of important questions:

• Will this information be available to anyone capable of accessing it, or only to the ones who can pay for it?
• What if nobody can access it at all, except the network itself, or the final corporate owner of the network?
• What if we install microsensors and devices somewhere, and nobody remembers that it was done, so that the next generations end up being monitored without ever knowing?
• Will governments, corporations, or insurance companies impose implants on us to control health-care costs?
• Will these implants be a right or an obligation?
• What if a connected medical implant gets hacked?
• Do we get to see, and correct, data collected about us? Will we want to?
• Do we have any idea how to educate our kids, or even ourselves, for this future?

Where Are Technical Communicators in this Brave New World?

The first thing one might think is that with machines talking directly to one another, there’s no need to explain anything. But even on the most primary level, all these machines need to be told what to communicate to each other, what to do when certain conditions are met, and whom to notify. The content economy that the IoT produces will certainly require people with the ability not only to analyze Big Data, but to communicate the analysis to executives, governments, and other society leaders, as well as to the general public. Technical communicators will see their roles expand, as they become interpreters of data or work with interpreters of data to communicate what it all means.

Technical communicators will take on some of the traditional roles of journalists, science writers, Web content developers, etc. But we will also be working together with developers and interaction designers to create useful, informative control interfaces for programming and configuring the myriad IoT devices that will populate our world: everything from an intelligent toaster to an electrical generator that knows to shut itself down gracefully before a main bearing ruptures and causes major damage.

Journalist Matt Asay assures us that “The real money in IoT is not in the ‘things,’ but rather in the Internet-enabled services that stitch them together.” The big challenge is not only to monitor all the data, but also to create relationships between different data related to the same entity. We can even modify different associated things that interact in a given space. The Internet of Things will be able to create human microclimates, social gathering spaces, or special labor market conditions. And technical communicators will be there showing people how to make sense of it all, and answering those difficult questions—to use the services and data available to us to improve our lives.

References

Asay, Matt. The Internet Of Things Will Need Millions Of Developers By 2020, ReadWrite.com, 27 June 2014. Accessed 17 February 2015. http://readwrite.com/2014/06/27/internet-of-things-developers-jobs-opportunity – awesm=~oIJJVVE3Z7RsMa

Ashton, Kevin. “Internet of Things,” Kevin Ashton’s Blog. Accessed 14 June 2014. http://kevinjashton.com/2009/06/22/the-internet-of-things/

Bradley, Joseph, Joel Barbier, and Doug Handler. Cisco white paper, “Embracing the Internet of Everything To Capture Your Share of $14.4 Trillion.” Accessed 14 June 2014. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/innov/IoE_Economy.pdf

G.E. White Paper, New “Industrial Internet” Report From GE Finds That Combination of Networks and Machines Could Add $10 to $15 Trillion to Global GDP. Accessed 17 February 2015. www.gereports.com/post/76430585563/new-industrial-internet-report-from-ge-finds

Roy, Debarati. Internet of Things: The Next Big Thing after Cloud, Mobility and Big Data, “Computerworld.in Interviews,” 24 July 2013. Accessed 14 June 2014. www.computerworld.in/interview/internet-things-next-big-thing-after-cloud-mobility-and-big-data-121382013

Wigmore, Ivy. “Internet of Things, IoT,” at WhatIs.com. Accessed 14 June 2014. http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Internet-of-Things

A communicator for over 40 years, Ray Gallon is a cofounder and principal researcher in The Transformation Society research group in Barcelona, Spain, and the owner of Culturecom, a consultantancy specialized in business process improvement through communication. He has over 20 years’ experience in the technical content industries, including major companies such as IBM, Alcatel, and General Electric Health Care. He is a member of the STC international board of directors, and past president of STC France.