The Internet of Things - Explained in 4 Easy Facts

All of us know what the Internet is, even if only a few of us know how it works. In recent times though, a new paradigm is showing up in the tech world. It’s called “The Internet of Things (IoT)”.

It may just just do to the way we interact with the world, what the Internet did for the world. Immeasurable value. As such, it’s extremely important that every one of us have even the slightest idea of what this paradigm is.

I will now try to explain to you shortly what the IoT is, what it will do for you, what it is already doing for you, and what problems we may have to face.

Lets get started!

The Internet of Things is a connection – between everything

You have at least a rough idea of what the Internet is. A connection between you, and other sites on a vast pool of resources, which you can access and interact with using your computer (I will do a later article on this – the Internet is probably not quite what you think).

Now, imagine this: what if your PC wasn’t the only thing connected to the Internet? What if any device in your house could connect to it? Your cellphone (which probably already does)? Your toaster? Your washing machine? Your night light? Your treadill? Your washing machine? Your car?

…or even… you?

Feels overwhelming at first, right? Or confusing? Yet this is the basic premise of the Internet of Things. A seemless connection of everything to the Internet. But why would you want it? What could be the practical use of your toaster having Wi-Fi access?

Everything’s usability would increase, and make your like easier - a lot easier

Let me take you through a normal day in a household with IoT capabilities.

You wake up at 6:30 am. Your alarm clock, which connected to the Internet to know the precise time, rings faithfully, then shuts off by itself. You really want to sleep in… but your drapes are already moving, because you pre-programmed them to, when the clock told them it was the right time. You get up, and go to the kitchen.

The coffee machine, who also got the clock’s message that it was time, has a nice cup of coffee all set up for you. The toaster has a nice set of toast, and a notification for you – you were out of toast yesterday, so it connected to Amazon, like you told it to, and ordered more. It came by drone before you woke up, and the transaction is already paid.

You take your time having your sweet breakfast. As you leave your house, ready to take on the day, your car automatically points out the best route, considering the surrounding traffic. As you’re midway to your workplace, you get stuck in traffic, due to some impatient idiot crashing his car. However, your car senses this and sends a message to your coworkers, telling them you’ll be late to a meeting, without you even having to pick up the phone.

Need I continue? I think the picture I paint is clear. A greater connectivity between devices can benefit you tremendously, making them all function like a well-oiled machine, and making your own life that much easier.

It would improve your city by quite a lot too

This paradigm can do more than make your personal life much more confortable. It can make your city run much smoother as well, in many ways.

Take a factory for instance. By integrating most parts of assembly lines with sensors, an IoT connection between them could help supervisors detect problems and solve them much more smoothly when they appear. Many tasks could be automated, and by making quality-of-life improvements to the work area, like the ones I mentioned above for your own home, employee satisfaction and productivity could skyrocket.

Lets consider the city itself now. Is its’ air quality acceptable? A network of sensors could measure air quality, and then send the info to joggers’ cellphones so they could avoid the worse areas.

Is the city vulnerable to earthquakes? Seismic sensors could measure the whole city, and notify citizens when an earthquake happens, as well as sending them the safest path to take and the place to go, in case a big building needs evacuationg.

Is the traffic bad, like I mentioned above? Simply get cameras to monitor the traffic in all parts of the city, compute all the data, then send it to users’ GPS systems, letting them know what paths are the best to take.

The quality of life improvements promised by this technology couldn’t be better. Many of you may be thinking “Where are the drawbacks in this? This sounds too good to be true!”…

…and you would be right.

This technology has some big problems associated with it

Most of you may have guessed one of the major weaknesses of such a system. Its’ a plague getting more and more common nowadays, and it may only get worse in the future. I’m talking, ladies and gentleman, about hackers.

Many systems are vulnerable to hackers nowadays. By connecting many systems in a network, it would only compound the problem if by hacking your toaster, a hacker could also gain control of your house. Or if my infecting a single part of the network, a hacker could spread a virus into the rest of the network.

There is already a lot of malware out in the open purely for infecting IoT devices. Malware like Mirai can make these devices into a botnet that can carry out DDoS attacks. Securing these systems is crucial if they are to take off. Otherwise, it would just put a lot of people at risk.

The companies implementing these technologies would have another big problem – handling all the data. As you may have figured out, these systems gather a lot of data and haul it all around a network. Without solid mechanisms of gathering, storing, and making sense of all the data captured by IoT devices, they wouldn’t be any better than the ones we are already using.

Where does this leave us?

At the cusp of a big technological breakthrough, that needs to be well managed.

Every new generation always ends up judging the one that came before, in one way or another. This new technology may just
be the one that gets your children thinking how we ever got along without this.

Of all the technological issues I’ve covered, this one just simplifies, eases, and adds greater efficiency to your life in a ridiculous degree. It is simply a revolution in how we live our daily lives, that would allow us to clear a lot of the boring drudgery, and free our time to focus on what matters.

…As long as we handle it right, that is. Otherwise, our children will end up thinking why we developed a technology we couldn’t make safe, or couldn’t use right.

But I have a feeling we’ll do it right :)

If you enjoyed the article, or would like to ask a question, feel free to sound off in the comments. I’m always ready to take some criticism, or suggestions on what I could do next!

Till the next one guys!