Week12: Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT)

The internet of things has is bound to radically transform the world through its potential abundance of applications which will inevitably revolutionise the world through different industries. But for people to be able to embrace the technology there has to be a perhaps radical thought process or reimagining the landscape of the present and thinking beyond the unimaginable.

The world is increasingly becoming demanding as needs of citizens are increasing day by day the pressure to provide innovative products to meet these needs is ever-present. Internet of Thing provides this avenue with vocational based technology, data mining, and intelligence and providing almost instant contextual prescriptions thus providing value adding activities.

One observation of the IoT is its ability to provide faster automation and access as viewed through the Industry 4.0 clip from lecture two. The clip also revealed the technology’s superior ability to uniquely identify individual units of production customise products from consumer responsiveness thereby boosting efficiency and cost savings. Or the Google car’s self-driven ability which replaces people’s driving giving them more time and opportunity to concentrate on other activities while travelling. The Nest smart home technology with its energy efficiency functions also reduces energy usage producing sustainability resources and usages

 

Another advantage the IoT’s technology to be able to collect, store and analyse massive amounts of data that it collects and analyses this data therefore augmenting and prompting responses from people. Through the use of sensor, tagging and tracking technology it can be used for public utilities in the form of transportation services. That is responding to estimated times of arrival or departure from a bus stop, the pricing or booking, discount offering and many more. Or in a shop the shopper can is identified and presented options with coupons based on the shoppers historical shopping and browsing history at the shop through a smartphone applications and many more options.

Its superior capability of collecting, analyse, predict and in a single looping action delivers its transformative potential the change the outlook of the world today.

 

Issues

There is so many possibilities with IoT yet these possibilities are not all that positive as there are some externalities that this technology is no exception to. The article on the Fusion Blog (2015) of the light bulb performing a denial of service attack on the smart home because it  was blown it kept sending packets of signals to the main hub for to fix it that eventually the signals completely become a DoS attack completely shutting down the also l the house functions. Even robots were continuously functioning outside their pre-programming parameters. Even from the hypothetical but practical reading about the smart home catching a virus is somehow depicts the complex and intricate nature of the technology itself being interwoven. Finally, the non-disclosure of the technology’s full functionalities becomes a concern when there are mishaps or unknown technological overrides of the system becomes invasive and to an extent places risk on human lives. In this clip and this clip, vehicles’ electronic control units and radio units  are easier to hack and control which are inevitably linked to many of the crucial functions of the vehicle and the implications are very threatening and costly. vehicles linked to the internet via their electronics are at high risks of being hacked and manipulated as explained by the experts.

 

Implications of IoT and the future:

• Integrated world, in the future all things will be interconnected and able to communicate with each other
• Increased innovation leads to increased personalising, IoT will enable efficient use of resources to personalise products and services to meet each individuals’ needs
• Sustainability, IoT be able to utilise resources in a sustainable manner
• Hi security concerns as hacking, virus and DoS forms of attacks.
• Lack of privacy since IoT will be reliant on every bit of personal information from citizens to enable it to function effectively
• High interactivity between machines and humans as the IoT has the potential to augment and prompt human responses unlike internet enabled technology
• IoT ubiquitous
• More leisure time as IoT enables to automate normal human functions all around as a consequence humans will have more free time on their hands

 

These are some of the implications I can think of and the future of IoT still remains to be seen as there is more need for more research to establish it future potential and uses.

 

 

References:

Gallagher, S. (2015, August 23). Highway to hack: Why we’re just at the beginning of the auto-hacking era. Retrieved October 09, 2016, from http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/08/highway-to-hack-why-were-just-at-the-beginning-of-the-auto-hacking-era/

The Nightmare on Connected Home Street. (n.d.). Retrieved October 09, 2016, from https://www.wired.com/2014/06/the-nightmare-on-connected-home-street/

4. (2013, December 05). Industrie 4.0 – The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Retrieved October 09, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPRURtORnis
5. (2014, May 27). A First Drive. Retrieved October 09, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqSDWoAhvLU

H. (n.d.). This Guy’s Light Bulb Performed a DoS Attack on His Entire Smart House. Retrieved October 09, 2016, from http://fusion.net/story/55026/this-guys-light-bulb-ddosed-his-entire-smart-house