How the Internet of Things Will Transform Us

Why the Internet of Things?

Only a decade ago, the number of devices connected to the internet was less than 1/7th of the world’s population. Today, there are nearly three times as many devices connected to the internet or each other. By and large, the now commonplace buzzphrase the Internet of Things, IoT for short, points to this phenomenon, its scale and implications for industry and everyday life. In many ways, the IoT is an old idea made possible by exponential improvements and efficiencies in communication speeds, data quantities and processing. Increasing the magnitude of information processing enables an environment with more communicating devices than people. According to International data Corp. machine-generated data in 2021 is approximately 40% of all generated data. Soon enough, human-generated data will account for only a fraction of all data. The effects of this shift stand to transform the way we live our lives and the world around us. Below you will learn the basics of what makes the internet of things possible, as well as the conceivable effects of its adoption on industry and society.

Protocols

To understand where the Internet of Things is going it is important to understand the many ways devices can communicate with each other and exchange information. For example, in order for your computer to connect to the internet, it must first connect to a local area network through a router and a modem (sometimes these come as one). The router routes the network to your home devices like laptop, phone etc., whereas the modem establishes a connection to the internet through your Internet Service Provider (ISP), say Bell or Rogers. This network is more or less physically bound to your house or apartment.

When you connect to the internet, your browser, such as Google Chrome or Firefox, sends an information request through the web address you entered to the server containing the information (the server is another computer that could be located anywhere in the world). Your computer packages the request into discreet bundles of information with the sender and receiver addresses, which reach your router as radio-waves, get converted into digital-bits and communicated to your modem, which finally transmits those information bits through a coaxial or an ethernet cable to a wide area network handled by your ISP. A wide area network is a network that allows devices to communicate over a much wider geographical space. Many wide area networks have to talk to each other in order for your request to reach the server, which then sends a signal back through similar channels.

Whew, that is a bit crazy.

The physical infrastructure required to make the internet work spans over devices, cables, radio antennas, and now optic fibers. To ensure that signals get transferred successfully, physical devices, also known as nodes, must talk a common language. I couldn’t communicate this to you unless you understood English. Similarly, different methods of transmission and communication require common languages, also known as standards and protocols.

I brought up the internet as a prominent example, but it is just one of many. Your smartphone, besides being able to connect to wifi, can also connect to a mobile network when you’re on the go, as well as other nearby devices such as your headphones, speaker, or smart scale. How does it do that? In a nutshell, through a hierarchy of standards and protocols that can establish connections at different frequency bands and convert signals to meaningful information like music or video. When your mobile phone with a “data” plan accesses the internet, it connects to a mobile network, whose protocols and physical infrastructure have evolved to host broadband transmission (broadband means capacity for a wide range of frequencies) called 4G, and in much of the rest of the world 3G. Your phone uses either the CDMA2000 or IEEE 802.16 protocol to connect to mobile broadband, which are different languages for transmitting a range of radio signals. Your home wifi connection, for example, uses the IEEE 802.11 protocol.

These protocols allow devices to access wide area networks, but other protocols like bluetooth and zigbee create short-range connections directly between devices. Bluetooth is used to exchange information between mobile phones, connect to wireless earbuds, speakers or a smart wallet, whereas zigbee for low-data connections such as home automation systems. How are these protocols established and standardized? Through different organizational bodies. Some of these include:

• The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• The American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
• The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)
• The International Standards Organization (ISO).

Why are protocols so important? Because they form the system of languages that allow devices to communicate with each other. If more and more devices have bluetooth capabilities, then they can exchange information with each other, such as your smart scale talking directly to a fitness app on your phone. The evolution of broadband is behind the internet economy of amazon, online streaming, and social media but this increased efficiency of telecommunications along with movement toward the universalization of standards has and will continue to facilitate the abilities of devices to communicate to each other.

Sensors

If standardized transmission protocols allow devices to communicate to each other, then sophisticated sensors increase their capabilities to extract information from their environments. Statista estimates that today there are around 30 billion connected digital devices, a number that is on an exponential upward curve. But the world of things is much vaster than the world of connected devices, from ecologies, to furniture, clothing, and foodstuffs. Some commentators have carved this distinction as digital-first made objects, such as your computer and smartphone, to physical-first objects, namely everything else with no capabilities of gathering and transmitting information.

Now imagine, more and more things being manufactured as digital-first from automated homes with smart appliances to autonomous cars, as well as things that are intrinsically non-digital like food, trees, and packaged goods being equipped with sensors that absorb information and transmit it to a computer that extracts meaningful patterns for human utility. This is the direction that industries, consumer goods, public works and our personal lives could be going.

The second part of the equation in the emergence of the internet of things then are sensors, and their capability for “datafying” parts of our environment that require consistent human maintenance such as inventorying, spoilage and repair tracking, health tracking, temperature modulating, etc. But what are sensors? We are all familiar with mercury-in-glass thermometers, where the mercury expands up the tube as temperature increases, or home thermostats that convert heat levels into electrical energy in order to set heating or cooling to desired levels. In other words, sensors are mechanisms that detect a certain environmental input like temperature, motion, light, humidity, pressure, heartbeat, etc and convert it into information (usually digital) meaningful either to a human or a machine.

As devices that transform an analog signal into a digital one, sensors have grown increasingly sophisticated to include human voice recognition, biological and chemical processes, and even smell and taste. Your smartphone alone is equipped with a wealth of sensors such as an accelerometer that detects change of movement and orientation, a gyroscope that detects direction, microphone that takes sound input, GPS receiver for satellite signals to determine position, heart rate sensor that measures your heartbeat, and a barometer that measures steps you take, to name a few.

But the predominant use of sensors will be in industry and institutions. Many organizations use motion sensors for security and statistical purposes, but soon enough occupancy sensors will be used widely to track real-time space utilization in order to increase workplace efficiency. Industry makes use of an even wider array of sensors for purposes of asset tracking, production efficiency and increased automation such as echolocation sensors for detection of object proximity, RFID tags for inventorying, power monitoring sensors for energy efficiency, pressure sensors for air hazards, and vibrations sensors to monitor machine functioning.

Now imagine sensors embedded to roadways, soil, plants, or the ocean to monitor relevant variables for purposes of public safety and environmental health, as well as biosensors that operate at the nanoscale for food analysis, glucose level monitoring, and cancer detection. You see where this is going. Sensors exponentially increase datapoints, and exacerbate the analysis of big data. Since humans can only consume a limited amount of information, the voluminous information generated will be circulated between smart devices, before being packaged for human readability. In light of the above, the IoT promises increasingly smart environments generating information at rates that vastly exceed human capacities.

Industrial IoT

The effects of the IoT are already visible in industry and stand to transform production. Sometimes referred to as industry 4.0, following three critical periods of industrial transformation preceding it, the industrial IoT is expected to usher in automated mining, highways, grid systems, automobiles, retail industry, and homes to name a few.

What will be different about these systems?

The use of sensors and integrated standards will optimize production by increasing cost efficiencies. These include lower energy consumption, real-time error detection, and optimized maintenance. One of the aspects of the industrial IoT is predictive maintenance of equipment through sensors and optimized data collection. Increasing the visibility of parts and equipment will also streamline supply chains and reduce inefficiencies at the distribution level. Amazon, for example, leads in the industrial IoT through its cloud service Amazon Web Services.

On the consumer end, something like your car will be able to communicate directly with the manufacturer or dealer, monitoring and improving performance in real-time. Because the IoT relies on the interconnection and integration of systems across industries, it also poses security risks that are worth considering. But this unprecedented transformation of production also stands to create new jobs in design, assemblage and maintenance capacities.

Datafication of Self

How will you or I be different in an IoT world? More sensors and more integrated standards means more ways to generate data. Each one of us will generate data in virtue of being in, and interacting with, smart environments. Think about your web activity or tablet and phone use. These generate data from clicks, login times, sessions, and keyword searches. Some of that data gets shared to third-party apps. Similarly, shopping activity, using public space, driving, your heart rate, etc will also generate data. What then happens to that data? To whom will it belong? Will it be traced to you? These questions raise concerns for personal privacy. They also raise concerns for the integrity of our identities. In other words, when more of our activity is “datafied”, it could have both positive and negative long-term consequences. Positive for safe driving and health monitoring, negative for our privacy and freedom. The outcome is a matter of regulation and policy that will crystalize in due time.

Humans in Smart Environments

A world with more communicating smart devices than people that generate and process more data and carry out more functions, in a way, is a less human-centric world. When systems with complex sensors and consolidated standards become ubiquitous within public goods, industry, and private homes, the place of human agency itself may transform in unpredictable ways. As a general rule, technological innovation and automation have altered human labour toward more rarified and less routine tasks. In some ways, these changes are not reflected across the global economy because of low-cost country sourcing, the transfer of production to countries with lower labour and production costs. However, if present trends continue, increased automation will eventually level the playing field globally, squeezing human labour in more rarified compartments of production.

On top of that, the sheer ubiquity of smart systems will mean that humans will be surrounded by infrastructure with orders of magnitude greater information-processing capacities. Alongside this development, human cognitive augmentation is also a possibility. Companies like Neuralink, founded by Elon Musk, have already set their long-term goals toward human enhancement by experimenting with inserting electrode threads in the brain. Albeit far into the future, human enhancement could help catch us up to the smart environments enabled by IoT. Because smart environments are likely more imminent, human agents will face an increasingly sublime technological world to whom they will cede a great deal of their decision-making. When most functions are taken care of by the background technology, human purpose and meaning will perhaps seek refuge in far less “labour-oriented” activities such as creativity and innovation.