Internet of things

This blog is about things or the internet or things of the internet or maybe the internet of things. It will be the random musings of four MSIT grad students trying to navigate the world of the internet and how thigs interact. Wikipedia defines The Internet of Things (IoT) "as a network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and connectivity which enables these things to connect and exchange data,creating opportunities for more direct integration of the physical world into computer-based systems, resulting in efficiency improvements, economic benefits, and reduced human exertions."

What exactly that means will be examined in a series of blog posts by these 4 students. We will discuss and analyze and disect what this truely means.

Monday, October 8, 2018

The story of watches, spying phones and saving lives.

Even though Internet of Things (IoT) has recently became popular in the public sphere, it is not a new concept. IoT dates back to the 1980's where speculations about automation were rampant. Recently I was at a coffee shop and I overheard a conversation between a couple of students. It followed something like this:

Student A: I was just talking about getting a new pillow and today I saw an ad on Instagram about pillows...It was so freaky.

Student B: It is so crazy, it has happened to me too.

While I am sure that it was purely coincidental, it got me thinking about what our future might look like with devices that share information regularly. We can look at IoT from an economic perspective or a social perspective if we want to clearly identify the different outcomes of IoT. But for the purpose of this post, I will keep it blended and try to give you a broader idea of the implications of IoT.

Let me start with the security concern. A lot of people talk about the government spying on us and your phones listening to you. It is not an uncommon scene today to find people covering their webcams with a tape. People deeply foster the belief that they are being spied on whether by the government or some big money hungry corporation. What most people don't realize that this has little to do with IoT and the concept itself. For example, most people explicitly consent to the terms and condition of most services they use and they will have to share some degree of data to make the user experience better. If the same data is used to market products to you should have read "Terms of Agreement" more closely rather than blaming integration of data across platforms. IoT is bound to increase exponentially and people should start to get used to this technology. Sure there will be unforeseen effects of it that are honestly beyond our comprehension. Take social media for example, who would have imagined that this same platform for sharing music and pictures would be the most influential campaigning platform for politicians...the examples go on and on. But let us also not forget the positive things that social media has contributed to as well. The same goes for IoT. The newly released apple watch is a great example of a wearable tech that can potentially save many lives. Among all the new glossy features of Apple watch, the fall detection and EKG feature stand out. By 2020, Apple projects to have 31 million watches being used by people. Even if it saves 1% of the entire population through EKG and/or fall detection, it will save about 310,000 people. Now let's use this fact in a moral debate, how much of our information are we willing to give up to save lives?

Citations:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/15269708060/in/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2018/03/01/apple-watch-sales-soar-to-8-million-in-last-quarter-company-owned-2017-fitbit-huawei-garmin/#16d3c8d7e915

https://bigdata-madesimple.com/pros-and-cons-of-big-data-spying/

https://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/feature/Explained-What-is-the-Internet-of-Things

Shyer Amin


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