Humans + Networks Will Disrupt IoT

I wrote a post the other day indicating that I believe IoT as a market is dead. In this post, I will talk about what comes next: Hybrid Networks of Humans + Machines.

There are two projects here which I find most interesting:

• Open Forest Protocol
• WeatherXM

The gist of what is happening here is that humans and machines are now coordinating more closely via tokenization of value. The trend has started with voluntary reporting of climate data and seems likely to spread into many other areas.

By assigning direct value to data observations, humans can be incentivized to work together to set up, maintain and utilize sensors. This creates networks of sensors that effectively pay for themselves to be built, maintained and extended.

This is a modification from the IoT vision of devices placed everywhere making observations. This vision extends the concept by focusing on how humans and networks can work together to support one another as a sort of mesh.

It is increasingly looking like networks are finding ways to pay humans to set them up and maintain them. That gets interesting, really quick.

When did this start?

I started thinking about what is happening and realized that humans have been working directly for networks for some time already. In particular, setting up Bitcoin mining rigs, Helium Miners or Ethereum PoS nodes. What you effectively have is universal basic income for engineers willing to help set up, maintain and facilitate hardware devices to run some economy.

In other words: Humans have already been working for machines at massive scale for some time. The impact of this cant be overstated.

Why MRV is the entry point for what comes next?

MRV (Measurement, Reporting, Verification) is a term taken from the carbon market. Generally speaking, MRV thinks in terms of accurately measuring things like carbon emissions and then verifying and reporting the impact.

MRV has changed recently, powered by advancements in technology. Open Forest Protocol, for example, enables humans with an application installed to act as "Validators" of natural capital observations. In other words, people taking pictures of trees helps "prove" the existence of those trees and the record is then stored on the blockchain.

When you add governance layers (validators not only recording observations but debating on what they saw), you begin to get some seriously divergent behavior from what IoT was meant to do traditionally.

As a result of these changes, I am pretty sure that MRV combined with Web3 has produced a highly disruptive innovation (humans that work with networks) that will be the thing that replaces IoT.

The Next Disruptive Innovation Is Government

One final point: I believe that these Human + Network hybrids have potential when moved into the realm of network states, decentralized governance and local economies.

Recently, Mayor London Breed of San Francisco effectively threw in the towel on the city ever improving. It is clear that something is deeply wrong with the forms of government we have available today.

I believe these Human + Network trends have the solutions.

For example:

1. Compensate validators for checking to see if trash has been picked up
2. Pay validators to do local tasks or submit "volunteering" work
3. Form groups and make decisions or rulings on topics
4. Allow local governments to pay anyone for doing critical services
5. etc

When you begin integrating humans into the IoT network as part of the process of checking to prove that something has happened, you open up huge innovation possibilities.