Instrumenting the World

Do a Google search on 'Internet of Things' and prepare to be confronted with a dizzying array of different views and promises of this 'new' concept. Every major technology product firm -- and consulting firm, for that matter -- has its own perspective on IoT with laundry lists of imperatives to "Adopt! Or be Relegated to Technological Has-Been Status!"

But, really, past the hype, what's the big deal? Let's take a look...

In the beginning...

The Internet was originally designed and deployed by DARPA to connect... wait for it... things! Those 'things' were computers located at various institutions around the country, and eventually the world. The early Internet was intended solely as a way for organizations like government agencies, government contractors, and universities to share information more freely and easily. Until that point, information transmitted between computers was shared physically by sneaker-net -- tape, disk cartridges, or Hollerith punch cards.

Fast forward a few decades, and the Internet had evolved from a relatively obscure network used by scientists, educators and students to a much more democratized and open platform for essentially anyone to communicate and interact, thanks mostly to Tim Burners-Lee, who led the development of the World Wide Web and the Mosaic browser.

This development, over previous platforms like USENET, America Online, and dial-up bulletin boards, shifted access to the Internet from cumbersome and expensive services to a simple connection to an ISP. Further introduction of now-ubiquitous services like Amazon, Yahoo and Google -- and, later, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram -- only reinforced planetary adoption of the Internet and the Web.

Intelligent Agents -- The Precursor to Internet of Things

Not long after the initial introduction of the Web, thought leaders in the field began to consider what would come next (the much anticipated and largely overlooked Web 2.0). One popular concept that arose focused on building intelligent services that could operate independently over the Internet. These 'intelligent agents', as they were dubbed, were intended to revolutionize both industry and personal lives through autonomous action. For example, agents could monitor inventory levels and automatically 'request' restocking as needed; for consumers, a personal agent could book an entire vacation -- from flight to car rental to hotel -- based on a calendar entry and set of predefined preferences.

This concept, still developing and gaining momentum, is essentially an 'Internet of Services', and it lay the fundamentals for evolving the Internet into a higher-level conceptual network, transcending simple computer-to-computer connections. As computing power and access to bandwidth has increased over time, this idea has led naturally to pushing intelligent agents deeper and deeper into the network, down to more purpose-focused individual devices.

So Why Connect Other 'Things' on the Internet?

This is where things get a little cloudy, due to all of the hype. In some ways, the answer to the question is simple -- 'Because we can!' With the advent of 128-bit IPv6, the number of available IP addresses goes from a claustrophobia-inspiring IPv4 limit of 4 billion addresses to a whopping 340 undecillion unique addresses (yeah, I can't imagine that number either). With that much capacity, we could assign an IP address to every star in the universe and still have a good chunk of the addresses left unassigned. Cool!

Given this, and the fact that simple computing devices can fit in very small places, IoT becomes pretty much a no-brainer, though the opportunity to get carried away is significant. To give a sense of how far down the path we already are, I present, from the files of "I Can't Make This Stuff Up", the smart water bottle.

For better or worse, new technologies tend to get weird before they stabilize into a truly valuable and transformative force (think about how 'Big Data' thankfully became just 'Data' after a few years of nuttiness). For IoT, unfortunately, we're just beginning to peak at the height of the hype. But all indicators suggest that, much like Blockchain, we will quickly move past fervor and into functional benefits. Early adoption has and will continue to occur for industrial applications (standardizing technology communication and control across production lines and supply chains) and in-home applications (like the Smart Home). Other uses in healthcare, like connected medical devices, and in physical security are showing strong early promise as well.

In other cases, it's more likely that IoT will provide solutions looking for problems in the short term, but ubiquity will expose additional opportunities for new and innovative applications over time, as is generally the trend.

Convergence: The Autonomous Intelligent Enterprise

So, let's skip ahead a few years and consider what will be possible as IoT and other technological advances converge in interesting ways. Imagine, for example, combining IoT with other 'smart' technologies like Blockchain and AI to build fully functional, autonomous business models. These constructs will self-identify, negotiate relationships and contracts, and automatically construct and operationalize value chains, with most or all functions devoid of human interaction or control. Once these technologies merge in a meaningful way, most industries will certainly gravitate to use, if for no other reasons than to reduce costs and improve performance through mass automation (think RPA on steroids).

To an extent this concept is already being explored on a simplified basis through Decentralized Autonomous Organization, or DAO (built on blockchains); early results have been both exciting (radically decentralizing business functions to optimize back office activities) and terrifying (the emergence of the 'DAO Attack' outlined here). The challenge, as always, is to avoid getting too far in front of the proverbial skis and build controls through standards and regulation -- but that generally lags bad behaviors.

Okay, So What?

It seems that the spread of IoT, though nascent, is like Thanos -- inevitable. Given the relative glut of available IP addresses and the low cost of decent computing power, IoT is a natural outgrowth of the Internet as it exists today. To the layperson, the adoption of this technology will go largely unnoticed, but for businesses, the potential benefits are pretty astounding, even given the hype. The key, as with any new technology, is to have a rational perspective on when and how to adopt it. The business case will only become stronger as IoT's place among other emerging smart technologies becomes more clear.