Welcome to the IoT world
A brief story about the IoT and how it changed the way we lived
If you are part of the baby boomer generation, gen x, millennial or gen z and want to know about IoT without getting bored this post is for you. This blog won’t take complex information and will try at max to get your attention in the way technology has changed our lives and how it will keep it changing.
So let’s get started…
A travel in time
To talk about IoT we must first go back on time 20 years when internet started to revolutionize our lives, but don’t get scared, I am not going to start to explain the history of the internet, protocols and complex things like that. In fact, the only thing you need to be present for now is that 20 years ago the internet connection were at a average speed of 56Kbps (today average speed of connection in U.S is 18.75Mbps). And what does it mean? it means that back in time when a user wanted to open a website it could take several seconds and even minutes depending the access of connection, webpage quantity of information and elements. The internet was revolutionary in away to accessing information, but it was limited in ways that can not connect more solutions to the users and society in general.
However, over the time the development of new technologies offered better quality and speed of internet; so opening a website could take less than a second and people also were available to connect devices such as cellphones, printers, TV, cameras, etc to the internet. This breakthrough moment when the speed of internet were exceeding expectations, led to hardware companies to develop solutions integrating functionality and connection to the internet was the entry point for IoT in millions of people.
What is IoT?
IoT is the acronym for Internet of Things and despite is now widely a popular word, back in time (1982) even before commercial internet, scientists, academics and tech pioneers were thinking about a network connection of smarter devices. Those key words smarter devices is the core of IoT.
Then, to define IoT it is the consolidation through the network of networks of a “network” the hosting of a large number of objects or devices, in order to have integrated as much as things as possible such as vehicles, appliances, mechanical devices, or simply objects like footwear, furniture, suitcases, measuring devices, biosensors, or any object that we can imagine.
Why IoT?
IoT in this moment is innovating in many ways lifestyle from regular to corporate consumers by allowing the users to manage and monitor their operations. So the user can have local and remote control over their devices, feeding them with information to create usage patterns and have a traceability over their daily activities.
The Internet of Things is a concept that is based on the interconnection of any product with any others around it. Take as example the connection between a speaker in you living room with the lamp of your studio. One premise of the IoT is that as long the devices are compatible to communicate with each other the independence in your actions and interaction with technology will be more efficient. But in order to achieve this, one important thing is to have IPv6 protocol which is a network layer protocol that enables data communications over a machine.
As long the devices are compatible to communicate with each other the independence in your actions and interaction with technology will be more efficient
It is possible to connect everything to the network?
In short, yes. At this moment the internet speed allows manufactures to create devices that can be connected permanently to the internet and the user can have information and use remotely if he wants. However, right now there are still some devices that are not intended to be connected yet, or it is required a more stable protocol. Imagine for example a smart jacket where the user can control the temperature of the jacket from the smartphone. So, as long the connection technology keeps evolving more devices and more appliances are going to be launched to the market.
Where to find IoT?
IoT devices now can be found almost everywhere. we are going to see 3 examples from 3 different areas in which IoT is having a development and a trending of consumption from comercial users to corporate ones.
Autonomous cars
Automation in cars was conceived around the 1920’s and official trials began in 1950’s over the years many companies has been testing and even now are in production cars with a certain capability of being self d-driven. Thanks IoT companies such as Toyota, Volvo, Telsa, BMW, Audi and others are investing time and resources in to make cars automated by implementing technologies such as:
- Connectivity: reliability in transferring data between the user and the car.
- Homogenization and decoupling: sending and receiver information to the car in the same form.
- Reprogrammable: implementing compatible software that can be modified easily by the user and the manufacturer all by maintaining the synchronization with the components of the car such as the transmission, engine, brakes, etc.
- Digital traces: Implementation of sensors and radars that can be connected and iteroperate with the master computer of the vehicle.
All this applied technologies in the autonomous vehicles has led the user to have some autonomy over the vehicle manipulation, such as not using psychically the wheel when there is defined trajectory over a point a or b while the car is collecting data to perform the actions of accelerate the car steer the wheel in certain direction and track the surrounding for humans or obstacles in order to avoid an accident. Nevertheless, the technology around autonomous cars is not yet fully completed and there has been some record of accidents but even so the projections for make the vehicles fully autonomous is in a near future.
Smart Cities
Along the development of intelligent vehicles, the concept of smart cities has taken a strong echo in the current society promoted by private companies in collaboration with academics and government institutions.
IoT in the city means the use of devices for the people use, such as traffic lights, security cameras, transportation monitoring to be more efficient and can by tracking the patterns of the society flux perform complex tasks like controlling the traffic reducing probability of jams, increasing security over criminal actions. Currently the best example of IoT in cites is the autonomous control of traffic lights when there aren’t cars passing by a street and there are people wanting to cross the line, the improvement of this technology eases the traffic of pedestrians.
Wearable devices
The most common IoT appliances are the everyday devices like, watches, speakers, house lights. These devices has become smart thanks to the market demand and the research from several years from companies focused in selling those kind of consumable products. For example, smart watches of today can be connected to the internet, exchange data with external servers collecting information from both the sensors and the servers.
Is the IoT intelligent?
The fact that with IoT you can connect devices to a network, get a response from them and use the collected information to analyze data, means that these devices can be upgraded to a level in which by using Machine Learning or Artificial intelligence the devices can perform better having a smart operation. So the IoT devices at some point can achieve certain level of intelligence depending the purpose, how is build and the performance test made on them. But it is important to understand that there are 5 levels of intelligence:
- L1 Identity: The object will be able to identify itself in a unique way
- L2 Location: You will know where that object is or where it has been.
- L3 State: It will be able to communicate the state it is in as well as its characteristics.
- L4 Context: The object will be able to perceive the environment in which it is located.
- L5 Criteria: The object communicates, identifies, locates, analyzes its environment, decides and executes according to its criteria.
It may seem that these classification it’s outdated but it is the point of reference to understand the intelligence in IoT devices. So think about what smarter devices you already have and what level of intelligence has achieved for bring a solution to your life and is there an additional level (Ln+1) above the level 5 still for the humans to achieve with smarter devices?
The risks of IoT
Several companies have thousands of IoT devices (Internet of Things) that are not directly related to the business, but that connect to their network daily. When you have that situation a risk is raised and is the unauthorized control over these devices in a private/business network.
The more employees a company have that uses some device IoT the harder for the IT security department of the company will be to maintain the network secure from hacking or filtering information.
According to a company called Infoblox, a survey was made for 1,000 IT directors in the U.K, Germany, US. and UAE to understand the security implications of IoT devices owned by their employees connected to the company networks. The results were that with a 35% of the directors, the average quantity of personal IoT devices connected to business networks are around 5,000.
Also, 39% percent of respondents said they used personal IoT devices while connected to the corporate network to access social networks, 24% used these devices to download applications, while 13% did so to access their preferred games.
the study also presented that the most frequent devices connected to business networks are: physical activity trackers (Fitbit, gear Fit, etc), digital assistants (Google home, Amazon Alexa). because this kind of devices are connected permanently to the user to collect data and even more the password selection from the users is not the most reliable, the risk of filtering information via the business network is high.
These types of vulnerabilities in IoT devices is a new task that IT departments need to work on, so the security of the company won’t be compromised.
In short…
IoT is a topic that has been around us for decades and covering all the information of it is basically either or make a book or spend several hours searching on the web. But, the idea of this blog is that at the end of this you have understood that you already are using an IoT device that in order to accomplish their purpose it is gathering data to create information and deliver statistics so you can make choices to improve your lifestyle.
Indeed there are risks like the privacy access and network vulnerability that makes you think if there is worth to use these kind of devices but at the end ver the time the technology is improving these kind of issues with continuous updates so the user can feel secure. Also is a responsibility of you as user to set a strong password and try to keep those devices connected to a secure network that is not from your company.
IoT is here to stay and inevitably over the years we as society are going to be more immersed into a technological one so by having a knowledge of how these things works we can have a better control over the use of IoT devices.
