Disruptive Technologies

Many articles have been written about disruptive technologies and yet we have not seen even just 10% of the disruption that the Internet of Things (IoT) will cause to the broad spectrum of our life as we know it. Let us try to bring some basic understanding of some of these disruptions by appreciating the efficiencies they promise to afford us while also looking at the tremendous risks they pose to our lives. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects that contain embedded technology to communicate and sense or interact with their internal states or the external environment. The point here is the THING not the internet. In this article, we will take on the autonomous electric car as our THING of focus.

Comparison with Gasoline THING

The image clearly shows that Electric cars are much better than the traditional gasoline cars and I wish to leave it at that, as shallow as that may be since our aim is to discuss the disruptive technologies around us.

Immediate Positive Effects

1. More efficiency, no doubt. Even though the car is autonomous, the current legal requirements are that there must be a 'driver' sitting at the driver's seat but doing nothing really. The car is programmed to drive to the desired destination and it will take the shortest route to get there with the 'driver' able to continue working as they move along. As with any traditional car, the functions of the autonomous car will depend on the price, model and how much loaded it is, so let us leave that part. Let us also assume that the cars will have a designated special lane so they don't mix with the other traditional cars. We will expect less or no accidents.
2. Cheaper Vehicular Insurance

Cost of insurance is arrived at from several variables which include: Veh specifics (yr make model), Cost to repair or replace said vehicle, Damage said vehicle likely to cause, Safety features of vehicle (alarms/airbags/daytime running lamps), etc. With our THING above, its insurance will be cheaper than that of the traditional car, due to the fact that there will be no driver fatigue, no over-speeding, no issue of talking on the phone while behind the wheel, no tail-gating and generally no misbehavior or any sort of road-rage.

3. Fewer Law-enforcers

When the incidence of crime is reduced, there will be reduced need for policing so the police can be utilized elsewhere hence resulting in safer environments all round. This obviously will translate to better Government service to the population.

4. Reduced corruption

Without pointing fingers at just one class of law-enforcers, it is a badly kept secret that traffic police are among the easily corruptible by the very nature of the individual contact they make with the culprits. If the autonomous car should be found to have erred, who would be at fault, who would be charged, and how would the charge be fashioned? Good question. Let us wait and see how this will be handled when it does happen. Whether the law will hold the manufacturer of the car or the owner answerable.

Negative Effects and Risks

1. Less Employment

At the very basic entry point, and we agreed to keep this discussion very basic, there will be fewer people to maintain the flow of traffic on our roads hence a shrinking of the workforce. Since the vehicles will be able to communicate with one another, as it were, it might even get to a point where there will be no need for traffic lights, maybe. The taxi drivers who are currently on strike complaining about low taxi fare which affects their take-home commissions would better know that the fares will drop to a point where there will be no need for drivers. That will be at the height of the disruptive technologies.

2. Ransomware

We know that the dangers posed by the internet are vast. So vast that we have not really come to appreciate its enormity.

According to www.iot.do More than 90 percent of IT security professionals said that connected devices will be a major security issue this year, 2017. However, 66% aren’t sure how many devices are in their environment, according to new research from Pwnie Express. The Internet of Evil Things? (IoET?) report found a common point-of-view among IT leaders – the Internet of Things (IoT) is introducing significant risk to companies today, but security programs are not keeping pace.

Going back to our THING, imagine you are seated behind the wheel of your autonomous vehicle which you have programmed to take you to point B when a hacker diverts the car to go elsewhere. The car doors wouldn't open and neither would any program overrides work against the ransomware. What do you do when your computer hangs? Reboot it, I guess. What if the Ransomware attacks all the autonomous vehicles on the road? Do you want to start to imagine what chaos this would cause? Chances are that at this point, even your phone may not be able to make any calls due to the connection with your autonomous car.

3. Robots

Anybody who grew up during the days of penpals must surely not like the robotic movies that the millennials enjoy watching these days. We are at the epoch where there will be no more movie stars as these roles will be done by robots. Now we hear of inventions where drones will be used to produce electricity from the wind. Robots are already serving guests in Japanese hotels. Soon we will have robots as pets. What is my point here? The same robots will be placed on the driving seat by bad guys and direct the autonomous vehicles to bomb sites of their choice. IoT is going to be our generation's waterloo because we are not able to enact laws to regulate the practice of the inventions around us. Inventions are rushed to market without the necessary legislation to regulate their use. Cybersecurity preparedness or mitigation is still in the 19th Century and yet the inventions may well be into the 22nd Century going by the speed at which the disruptive technologies are rolling out. Paul Paget, Pwnie Express CEO says that “When you consider the exploding number of connected devices, many with poorly configured or no security and the fact that security teams can’t see these devices, it becomes clear that security programs need to shift spending to adapt more quickly.”

This article, in its very basic form as discussed, is not meant to be a scare piece to stop people from bringing more inventions to market. At the same time, any images used are a depiction of the inventions of our times which are ground-breaking pieces of technology and a marvel to be applauded and admired in their entirety. We just need to be more pragmatic, especially at Government level and it is good that professionals are now spending more and more time playing catch-up to bring some order into the various industries already affected but the risks of IoT.

Ref:

https://www.iot.do

https://www.slideshare.net/gshobb4005/electric-cars-vs-gas