The Internet of Things
By The Phantom
Well, heck, everyone else writes about it without knowing what it means, and so shall I. Some of the definitions you see for the IoT (Internet of Things for those of you living under a rock) are pretty wild. Electronic Designtried recently to summarize several serious definitions:
- Cisco calls it the “Internet of Everything” and says it will be the “latest wave of the Internet — connecting physical objects… to provide better safety, comfort and efficiency.”
- IBM describes it as “a completely new world-wide Web, one comprised of the messages that digitally empowered devices would send to one another. It is the same Internet, but not the same Web.”
- General Electric’s “Industrial Internet” is perhaps the most exciting vision because it directly envisions new applications. At GE, the industrial Internet represents “the convergence of machine and intelligent data… to create brilliant machines.”
You got all that? In ways it reminds me of promises of yester-year that didn’t exactly pan out, at least not in the manner envisioned. When I was haunting high school I was promised that nuclear energy would make electricity “too cheap to meter.” Honest, that was a common saying back then. Anyway, I think it’s safe to say that something is happening now, it’s gonnabe big, and people are calling it, whatever “it” is, IoT. I just think of it as a whole bunch of machines connected together via the Internet, for better or for worse.
I have this grey cylindrical Internet-connected thingie in the kitchen that can answer a lot of questions for you and can do a lot of tasks upon voice command. Couldn’t do it without fast connectivity — I don’t want to wait two minutes to hear the weather forecast. Last night I asked her what a contrail was, and she gave me an accurate answer. I asked her that because I’d just read that her initial answer to the question was to quote the conspiracy theory that contrails were dispersing chemicals designed to control our minds. When that fact was called to Big River’s attention, they quickly did a little re-programming.
I think I’ve written before about my favorite episode of a radio drama series of the ’50s called X Minus One. The episode was called A Logic Named Joe. Seems that in some future year people were buying machines called logics. All logics were connected via some unnamed network and, working together, could come up with the answer to any question you asked them. The whole thing worked great until one day it wasn’t working and the world was in panic because this thing they’d come to depend on was going bananas. The problem was eventually traced to one certain logic, named Joe by the little boy who had insisted that his father buy that particular unit.
But I digress. What does this all have to do with us? Well, for starters, it says the world is going to need a lot more connectivity in the future, and what industry is in a great position to provide that connectivity? You know the answer. And remember all those things my cylindrical gal can do? Well, somebody is going to have to connect all the pieces in the home for the average Joe, uh, maybe I’d better say the average Pete. Who is in people’s homes connecting such things? You know the answer. If you haven’t been burning the midnight oil getting up to speed on all this stuff, you’re behind and better get busy. Don’t worry about the definition, you just need to learn about connecting it.
Visit the link below to listen to the X Minus One episode of “A Logic Named Joe”
The Phantom
the.phantom@youwontfindmeanywhere.com
You never know when The Phantom is standing right beside you. Sometimes he is in a meeting with you or walking the floor at your favorite cable show. Sometimes he’s hanging with the suits and other times with the front liners. But be assured, The Phantom sees all, The Phantom knows all and, most importantly, The Phantom tells all.
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