The Internet of Things

Today I met with an organisation that provides communications infrastructure. The discussion quickly came to areas of hot debate around the Internet of things and to what degree that domain is developing and the trends that are emerging.

There was an interesting balance in how the metaphors were explained. The discussion rocked between “we can tell everything you are doing” to “but privacy is important”, I found myself developing a split personality.

However where it got interesting was when the discussion came to integrating mNy different systems. We are sat in a restaurant, they have a point of sale, a security alarm, lighting, heating and yet today all of these systems are separate. I recently encountered the same issue when designing my home cinema, how do I link my TV, with my xbox, and my blue ray player. My solution to date has been a universal remote, but this does not let me connect my PC to my telly, stream audio to the bedroom and integrate my surround sound system.

Each vendor wants to lock you in, and in doing so limits my ability as a general consumer to achieve something which should be common practice today.

Even open systems such as Android lock in, for example in the secure payments space (Google checkout / wallet).

It would be interesting to determine how much time people spend working out how to restrict people doing things, over the time spent helping people exceed their potential.

In the near future machines will have greater privacy than peopole, will be able to control more things than people (electricity, heat, financial transactions .. ) and we will be outnumbered 100-1.

I will let you know if I solve my Home Cinema problem

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