We’ve already
written about why 2014 is really, finally the year that the “internet of
things”—that effort to remotely control every object on earth—becomes visible
in our everyday lives.
But most of
us don’t recognize just how far the internet of things will go, from souped-up
gadgets that track our every move to a world that predicts our actions and
emotions. In this way, the internet of things will become more central to
society than the internet as we know it today. The web
will survive, just as email survived the arrival of the web. But its role
will be reduced to that of a language for displaying content on screens, which
are likely to be more ubiquitous but less necessary. Here’s a closer look at
the internet of things that’s already here, and where it’s headed.
The internet of
things will create a world of “invisible buttons”
Rooms that know when you’re present and how you’re feeling can
illuminate themselves appropriatelyPhilips
The pioneer species of the internet of
things is the smartphone. For example, every time we take a smartphone
with us in a car, it beams information on our location and speed to Google. The
result is real-time traffic information that can be used by everyone.
That
smartphones gather traffic data without their users ever being aware that
they’re doing so shows how the internet of things replaces the internet-related
actions we already know—click a button, navigate a webpage—with context. This awareness,
especially as it relates to where we are in the physical world, what time of
day it is, and whatever other data Google and other companies have about us,
leads to what Amber Case, a researcher for mapping
company Esri, calls “invisible
buttons.” An invisible button is simply an area in space that is “clicked”
when a person or object—in this case, a smartphone—moves into that physical
space. It could be as small as a two-inch square on top of a conventional
credit card reader, to enable payments, or as large as a room, which might want
to know that you have entered or left so that it can turn on or off the lights.
With Phillips’ Hue and countless other
smart lights, this is already possible.
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If invisible
buttons were just rigidly defined on-off switches, they wouldn’t be terribly
useful. But because the actions they trigger can be modified by an
infinitude of other variables, such as the time of day, our previous actions,
the actions of others or what Google knows about our calendar, they quickly
become a means to program our physical world.
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That we
currently need a cell phone to act as a proximity sensor is just an artifact of
where the technology is at present. The same can be accomplished with any
number of other internet-connected sensors. GE and Quirky’s motion, sound,
light, temperature and humidity sensor, called Spotter, is a good example. It’s
even possible to determine proximity indirectly—for example, internet-connected
smart energy systems can figure out you’re home the moment you switch on a
light.
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Apple’s play
for the internet of things
Apple stores can already pinpoint your location with unprecedented
accuracy.AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Apple seems
keen on the idea of invisible buttons. While the company has been relatively
quiet about the technology, it recently rolled out something called iBeacon,
which allows any newer iPhone or Android phone to know its position in
space with centimeter precision. You can think of iBeacon as a version of GPS
that works indoors, and which is also more precise. This allows the developers
using Apple’s technology to define “invisible buttons” of just about any
dimensions.
What do Apple
and its consumers get from this innovation? Apple gets more access to its
customers; its customer get more access to its stuff. Apple just rolled out
iBeacon technology in its own retail stores
Right
now companies like Estimote are pitching to retailers the
hardware “beacons” that broadcast the signal required to make iBeacon work.
That Apple has made iBeacon open enough to work with third-party hardware
providers like Estimote shows that Apple wants the standard to spread. Notably,
the signals broadcast by any iBeacon-compatible radio (which broadcast signals
known as Bluetooth Low Energy) can also be picked up by Android and Windows
phones, which shows that Apple is trying to dominate a technology that could
become ubiquitous across phones. This means invisible spatial buttons that
could be so small that touching your smartphone, smartwatch or other equipped
device to a surface will allow you to press that “button.” There’s nothing
stopping this technology from be squeezed into something as small as a credit
card, or being embedded in clothing or other discrete wearable devices like
fitness sensors, wristwatches or even temporary tattoos.
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Anticipatory
computing and the end of interfaces
The more we reveal to Google, the better our user experience will be.AP
Photo/Paul Sakuma
Objects on
our bodies (health monitors, smart glasses) and in our homes and businesses
(smart thermostats, lights, appliances and security systems) can all be
programmed to interact in complicated and unexpected ways once the internet
knows that we’re present and what our intentions might be. For example, a smart
home might know when you wake up based on the activity monitor on your wrist,
and begin warming up the house, brewing a pot of coffee and switching off your
security system. That’s the vision of companies like Smartthings, which is
in the forefront of making the internet of things accessible to people
other than techies and hobbyists.
These
pro-active actions are all part of what some call “anticipatory computing.” Invisible buttons and
other contextual information about you will allow the internet to do more than
facilitate your needs. It would actually anticipate them. Google
Now is a good example of the potential of this technology. As long as you
opt in, Google has access to every meaningful store of explicit data about
yourself you create—email, contacts, calendars, social media—and plenty of
implicit ones as well, like your web-browsing history. Adding location and
other physical inputs to that data allows Google Now to do everything from
sending you hyperlocal news items targeted to the precise neighborhood in
which you live to offering information about the television
show you’re watching at that exact moment.
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So what’s
required for more companies to tap into anticipatory computing? There are
companies that specialize in “reality mining,” which refers to using
data to track the remarkable predictability of our daily lives.
This is a potential bonanza for marketers who want to target ads
to particular times and places. Marketers are already starting to use this
technology to target both online and real-world advertising (like
billboards).
Wearable
computers will keep us connected at all times
The UP wristband is one of the first wearables that can trigger actions
in other smart, connected objects.Jawbone
The next
layer of the internet of things will require combining disparate streams of
data “mined” from reality—everything from your location to the members of your
social network. This is called sensor fusion, a task that is basic to
all big data projects. Knowing where you are throughout the day won’t mean
much, but add in data about who else is present and a computer algorithm can
tell you how likely you are to get the flu. Finding the connections—in
other words, meaning—in all this data is key to making it useful. “We have
frictionless data gathering but we don’t have frictionless correlation,”
Esri’s Case said at last year’s Le Web conference. “If you have to be a
data scientist to do it, then it’s totally wrong.”
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Mike Bell,
head of the new devices group at Intel, says that the future of smart devices,
“whether it’s a wearable [computer] or a next-generation tablet replacement,
will have a real user interface, but it’s not necessarily visual.” Bell, whose
primary interest is wearable computing, can’t talk about what Intel is
currently working on, but I’d guess from our conversations that it’s more
likely to look like a wristband fitness monitor than another cell phone.
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In other
words, the internet of things will replace the internet, but not by giving us
another way to explicitly tell computers what we want. Instead, by sensing our
actions, the internet-connected devices around us will react automatically, and
their representations in the cloud will be updated accordingly. In some ways,
interacting with computers in the future could be more about telling them what
not to do—at least until they’re smart enough to realize that we are modifying
our daily routine.
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Sensing and
responding to your needs, wants and emotions
There’s no need to post a status update about how you’re feeling when
your smart gadgets already know.Good Night Lamp
If this all
sounds like mind reading, that’s because in a way it is. Munjal Shah,
entrepreneur in residence at Charles River Ventures, surveyed a thousandpeople about what super powers they would acquire if they could. The most
popular answer was “speak all languages,” but the number two answer might
surprise you: the ability to comfort anyone. Shah had conducted the survey in
order to determine what sort of businesses could be built to give people these
abilities (the first one, universal translation, is at least plausible).
Comforting a friend is, he concluded, exactly the sort of thing the internet of
things would be good at. First, our connected devices will be able to monitor
our state—inactivity could indicate sickness or depression. And maybe we’ve
recently posted on social media about a tragedy that befell us. Text alerts are
sent out to friends, asking them to reach out, and voila—in as much as mediated
communication is any sort of comfort, no one need ever feel lonely again.
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Once our
possessions can both sense and respond, and are directed for the most part by
computers, the world becomes something like a living creature. “We believe
the digital world and the physical world are merging, and that done correctly
what this will do is create a virtual representation of all of our physical
devices online,”said Jeff Hagins, chief technology officer of Smartthings.
“What that will accomplish is that it will make the physical world
programmable. When we change the digital representation, the physical world will
change in response.” If your goal is to fuse your mind and body with the
internet, this is good news. But if you were hoping that in the future, getting
away from it all would be as simple as switching off your mobile phone,
you’re in for a rude surprise.
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