“The
Internet of Things” is a pretty annoying term, as buzzwords go. There
is no new Internet made up of objects. There’s no little Twitter for
thermostats, or Facebook for waffle irons.
“Internet
of Things” refers everyday appliances that are now networkable: Lights.
Thermostats. Coffee makers. Security cameras. Door locks. Sprinklers.
Robot vacuums. Usually it just means you can control them from your phone.
(There’s
also an explosion of IoT interest in industrial and commercial
buildings, and that’s a totally different ball game. Those uses allow
alarm systems, heating/cooling, lighting, and all kinds of sensors to
communicate intelligently, both with each other and with building
managers, for a huge boost in convenience, savings, and environmental
payoff. But in this article and video, we’re talking about the consumer Internet of Things things—stuff in your home.)
Some
of these consumer things make sense. The thermostat is handy; the Nest
thermostat programs itself by observing what time you come and go, and
the Honeywell Lyric uses your phone’s GPS to know when you’re
approaching the house, and get it heated or cooled in advance. OK.
But
most of the IoT is just like a gold rush to sell stuff. There’s an IoT
water bottle, an IoT doggie-treat dispenser, and IoT toilet-paper holder
(lets your phone know when the roll needs replacing). There’s an IoT
umbrella, an IoT fork, an IoT toothbrush, an IoT trash can, and—I am not
making this up—an IoT tampon.
And
don’t forget the Egg Minder. I kid you not: now, from anywhere in the
world, you can see HOW MANY EGGS YOU HAVE LEFT. This is a real, shipping
product.
So
far, the Internet of Things is more like the Internet of Things that
Aren’t Selling Well. That’s partly because they’re complicated to set
up, partly because they’re just not that necessary, and partly because
you need a different app for every single product! One app for the
lights, a different one for the thermostat, a third for the coffee
maker.
Every
big company is trying to create a unified standard—Apple, Microsoft,
Google, Intel—but that just means that there are now 40 “unified
standards!”
So—clearly, this is like the Commodore 64 era of the Internet of Things: a lot of heat, very little light.
The
security cameras and thermostats make sense; most of the rest of it,
you can safely ignore. But that’s the way it always is with new tech
developments, right? Everybody throws everything at the wall, and a few
things might stick. A few years from now, we’ll have figured out which
consumer items actually need to be networked.
You
know how we now understand “phone” to mean “cellphone,” “TV” to mean
“HDTV,” and “refrigerator” to mean “refrigerator/freezer”? In the same
way, the term “Internet of Things” will eventually fade away. It will be
unnecessary; we’ll just assume that anything that deserves to be
networkable is networkable.
