What is the internet of things?
According to Wikipedia, The Internet of Things refers to uniquely identifiable objects (things) and their virtual representations in an Internet-like structure.
Today, the internet is basically a network of computers, and mobile devices. But, we are now at a tipping point. Soon, there will be more devices connecting to the Internet than there are humans on earth. Everything from your appliances at home to your car will be connected to the Internet, uploading different kinds of data. There will be more and more sensors in everything, recording your movements, and uploading it to the cloud. Then, the software in the cloud will crunch the data to make meaning from the large amount of data collected, and will make something happen as a result. Say, your car will heat up in the winters, before you get there. And the car will know when you woke up, and when you will be in the car. In the meanwhile, your bath water will be optimally heated et cetera. This upcoming wave of data is the reason Big Data startups are hot right now. Because, there is an enormous need to crunch this data, to mine valuable information from it.
If you have been wondering what ever happened to IBM, and what is with their ads on TV, talking about streams of data, this is what they are exactly preparing themselves for. This video should help you understand more –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfEbMV295Kk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2br2_twHfw
Soon, there are going to be a lot of hardware companies getting into home automation, warehouse automation, and many other areas where automation can save large amounts of energy. Today, home automation services that turn off your lights as you leave a room, or let you control everything via your mobile are considered a luxury. But soon, they will be a necessity. All of this information processing will not be necessarily centralised though. It will not be a magical realm that connects everything with each other, like in Pandora in James Cameron’s Avatar. It will be distributed, but you could connect it to a central service, such as Facebook.
That sounds cool. I want this now!
Try IFTTT. It’s a tool that lets you define actions based on different sensors like your phone, or anything else. You can set up IFTTT such that you receive a message every time you get an email, and also hook up actual hardware with it.
And if you need more, try WOVYN. They sell sensors that you can program to trigger different actions. They have a lot of these, including, water, temperature, and presence, So you can program your lights to turn off, when nobody’s home.
What are your thought on the future of Internet? Let us know in the comments. Also, the future of tech gets you excited, and you want to write similar articles, drop a line at [email protected].
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