Alessandro Bassi Martin Bauer Martin Fiedler Thorsten - Enabling Things to Talk

The Author(s) 2013

Thorsten Kramp 1

Abstract

The expression Internet of Things (IoT), coined back in 1999 by Kevin Ashton, the British technology pioneer who cofounded the Auto-ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is becoming more and more mainstream. In opening the IoT Week 2013 with a pre-recorded video message, Ashton insisted on the realization that IoT is here now ; it is not the future but the present . While Gartner identifies IoT as one of the top ten strategic technology trends, Cisco forecasts 50 billion devices connected by 2020, a potential market in excess of $14 trillion, and also claims that IoT is actually already here. Similarly, it is not only companies with a technological focus, such as Ericsson, Bosch or Siemens that use IoT to advertise their cutting edge technologies media companies such as the BBC are conducting research activities and have plans for IoT deployment. In short, we are currently on the verge of witnessing the emergence of a mega-market, where markets such as home and building automation, electricity generation and distribution, logistics, automotive, as well as telecommunications and information technology will steadily converge. As yet, we do not know the consequences of connecting all of these smart objects (smart meter, e-vehicle, cargo container, fridge etc.) to the Internet.

The expression Internet of Things (IoT), coined back in 1999 by Kevin Ashton, the British technology pioneer who cofounded the Auto-ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is becoming more and more mainstream. In opening the IoT Week 2013

At the same time, the Internet of Things (IoT) is not something you will experience as such itself. What you will see is that more and more objects become connected. If you are selling products, you will be negotiating with providers of connectivity. If you are building, selling or inventing models or tools for providing services or applications, you will notice that the convergence of IoT, big data and energy efficiency, combined with cheap hardware, software, data storage and analytics, favours open standards, innovation and interoperability. Daily activities that were distinct become interwoven in new formats and business models.

Thus, in effect, the Internet of Things is a combination of a technological push and a human pull for more and ever-increasing connectivity with anything happening in the immediate and wider environment a logical extension of the computing power in a single machine to the environment: the environment as an interface . This push-pull combination makes it very strong, unstoppable, fast and extremely disruptive.

Mireille Hildebrandt, a Dutch professor working on the implications of emerging technologies and the rule of law, states that we may need to develop an Ambient Law that is embodied in the algorithms and human machine interfaces that support Ambient Intelligence and for this we will have to break through our paralysis, ready to become literate in terms of a new script. In a speech to the Pittsburgh Technology Council in 2009, Eric Schmidt, an American software engineer and executive chairman of Google, focused on the negative effects of (what he called) institutional fragmentation on innovation and integration. He wondered whether governments and the very process of policy and policymaking itself could benefit from the iterative cycles of measuring success and failure that characterize the engineering and design prototyping cycles. With this amount of real-time tracking and aggregated data and information rather than heuristics, the act of governing itself could benefit. Specific laws could take effect for 3 months and be evaluated and adjusted and then, based on real data rather than estimates, be adjusted again. It is this process that can lead to combinatorial and system innovation.

Two dominant characteristics unite these different perspectives: firstly, a sense that Internet connectivity is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and pervasive; and secondly, the idea that eventually everything including mundane physical artefacts will be connected.