The Internet of Things (IoT)

Internet DNA Podcast

Good, bad or over hyped? We can see the future but right now a connected toaster isn't quite doing it for us. Today we explore the possible uses of IoT and their benefits to humanity.

Big data has always been used for good and bad so the more connected our devices the more companies know and the more they can use this for... or against us.

But what about the good in emergency services, supermarkets, global emissions and greening our planet? Or perhaps the netflix-atisation of our fridge? What if this connected world could help us save money. Forget uswitch, just use AI to always put us on the right tariff, and cancel unused subscriptions.

Then there is self mending machines, roads, trains and even humans! Imagine not having to get rail replacement buses ever again. We are in an age of digital dis-harmonisation - who doesn't shout at their device. Can IoT change that, will we start to love alexa?

Transcription

(this transcription is written by robots… so don’t be surprised!)

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of internet DNA with me, Abby and me. Dan, this week we're going to be discussing the internet of things or IOT. It's the fourth industrial revolution, which makes me laugh because it's a bit like two point note, which was a bit of a damp squib. So I wonder if 4.9 so what were all the other industrial revolutions? Well that was the industrial revolution. Yeah, and then the industrial revolution and then, well I think see one of those is a computerization. So we have the power ring once we've got power and we get the production line. Once you get production line, you get digitization. Once you've got digitalization, we now get the internet of things. So good or bad or overhyped neither good nor bad. Over-hyped. That's an interesting question because it certainly has its applications and it will increase. It's very useful in specific instances at the moment and those will increase over time. Like one of the things is aircraft engines for example, constantly monitor themselves and send data back to the manufacturers so that you've got this continual information on how the engines work throughout their lifetime. And you can imagine the same thing with any number of devices where they self-monitor to help people build better or understand when they're about to break before they break. So you can do proactive maintenance and that sort of thing. I think it's a brave new world. It's what technology was always meant to be. It's so FY the future, but we're not there yet. But I agree what 70% of data's never actually used at the moment. But being able to use the data for good for monitoring things constantly as opposed to having to stopping them, testing them and hopefully then using AI will be able to go as well. So tube lines, train lines. We'll never have to have engineering work. Look the weekend when you get a bus because it will happen. And so it will be cheaper. It will be better, it will be less disruptive. So that's the same with nuclear power stations. Roads yourself. In many ways is the most interesting one. We talked about that before, didn't we? I hadn't factored the internet of Abby into things at the moment, but yes, at the moment I'm thinking about healthcare in that it could clean better. It would be a better at knowing where the people had contagious viruses, it would be able to better monitor and it's so energy efficient using internet of things, connected devices because it only gives what's needed and only put the things on. Yeah, so you can imagine where you have devices that are constantly monitoring your health, your blood pressure, your heart. So you could pick up things like how many people needlessly die because it didn't know that had something until it was too late. We talk about engines on aircraft, but it's much the same set of stats. It's this continual monitoring of stats to look for outliers. People go, Oh, smart homes, but if we're trying to get to zero by 2035 more carbon neutral, I find the idea of internet of things, which we're really not there yet, but I find it great two fold because one, it helps me. I can leave the house and not have to go all OCD of did I turn the taps off? Did I turn the lights off? Did I turn the heating down? Have I locked the door? I can just leave the house and the house will do it. That's the same in offices. No one has to worry about what's turned off, what's not turned off, what's cleaned. Even the plants, you don't have to worry about whether the plants are watered. So it really finally helps humans in the way that I hope that virtual assistants are also going to finally help humans. And on the other side of that, it makes it economical with money, energy, the climate or that because we're not leaving all these things on or we're not overheating or we're not boosting things up quickly because we didn't need them on minimum. And I know that a lot of companies are already piloting and trying, but at the moment it's not a money making scheme, but the by 2050, isn't it going to be a billion, trillion dollar industry and there will be nothing that isn't, but you wander into a dangerous area at the moment. Uh, internet home, they're fairly human controlled, but you can understand that as we were talking, you start putting AI into there and machine learning into there that you don't have to turn your lights off. It knows if your phone leaves the house or you leave the house. It can quite safely turn lights off and go forth and it can manage all of that sort of thing itself. But the danger is, and this the same danger that we always talk about when there is this much data about you all the time always on it is open to misuse. It's not that the data is bad, it's not that the technology is bad, but we don't have to look too hard to see what companies do when they have vast amounts of interesting data about people and how they monetize it. Well, it will be very easy for tech savvy burglars. And then there's the creepy side that was on the news this week about baby monitors and the cameras that people, when they set up their routers, their smart assistants and their baby monitors, they don't put a different password in or turn the camera off. So people are either looking at things and the other thing about security, which people don't think about so much is if there's an easy way to get in for hacker, it's not just that they got into the baby monitor. If everything's connected, they can then get onto your computer and then into your bank account and they've got everything they need. It's the way in. That's the worrying thing. Not that that particular, but also if you look at it like you want to get health insurance, but now they actually know your health. They know your health since you had dot. So if you need health insurance and not going to give it to you because they know they're going to lose money on it. There's that kind of danger about the data as well. Is it the, actually with all this data and with all these changings, something will be put in place to make sure that either you don't need insurance because everyone has it or that happen and that you can always get insurance. But that doom and gloom of, Oh, you're not going to get insurance. You're not going to be allowed on the internet. You're not going to be allowed to book a holiday. Well maybe things will have come up along the way to mean that you can still do this. Yeah, perhaps. But what I'm saying is you don't have to look far in the news to see that any company that has any data about you is almost universally using it in a way that you did not expect and would not have wished. So maybe the medical insurance is the wrong example. But what I'm saying is that as we massively ramp up the amount of data that's available about our lives, we should be aware of how that data has typically been used by companies. And I'm not saying all companies are evil or just say that any point in human history where we've made more data available to people, it has been used for both good and bad. What can we do to counteract that? I know you are not a big fan, but one of the reasons for the culture in Ian and Banks's books is because the machines are the only things that have enough power to understand the data, but there's so much data. So there then left to regulate everything and then human beings don't have to make a vast amount of decisions about their life because everything's already optimized for them. That wasn't quite what I was thinking. I was more thinking along the lines of, Oh well we can make sure that we have this software and therefore our data gets rubbed out. Or they could be a law that means that companies are not allowed to use it against you and these errands. Not that the computers were going to just completely nothing. I think that's the way forward, to be honest. Okay. But I want to talk about some more positive things that I take. I do think it's been a bit over-hyped and has had a bit of a bad rap and I think it is coming, but things like in emergency services, being able to use connected devices is going to be amazing. Being able to have the data to know when someone might be about to die is amazing. I think in crime that's a difficult one because of the surveillance, but surely, well maybe that's minority and poor. Let's not go there. Let's not go there. Yeah, but you see you don't have to wonder off the path to you. Okay. Supermarkets, by using connected devices, surely they can keep food fresher for longer. They can make sure that they're not overstocking. We can reduce food waste, not just supermarkets and you can have a fridge and they can monitor or do they actually eat rather than what do they think they want to eat. If you thought about what food do I throw away more often than not, everywhere you go, stop buying them. Yes, but your smart fridge would go, I'm not buying anymore over jeans because they never eat them. And so that's a good thing because now that OB-GYN that you would have just allowed to go rotten in your fridge because you like them but you don't ever eat them. And I've got the same thing and we're spinach and I buy a lot of spinach. It's not that I don't eat spinach, it's just don't eat as much as I buy. But that's not a good thing cause it's going to go the Netflix of food and your fridge and that it's only going to give you the things you eat and the things that you eat. Not necessarily be the things you should eat or want to eat. But that's why you eat a lot of white Brendan nuts. Hello. Have you considered? And then do it in a nudgey way like that. Cause you can start to use IO and say, look, this is why when you're into the internet of things and everything's connected, if you suddenly now get your gym going, well you know you ate three Crespi coolers today. So you're going to have to work harder. We're going to put your exercise level up to eight to work zoom where it just kind of, well you haven't been coming recently, so you might as well just cancel your membership. I don't think they've ever done that in their life, have they? That's what you were saying about the fridge. So you know what you're not eating and [inaudible] you shouldn't have a thing where your phone knows that you don't go to the gym and you're paying 50 quid for it. It should cancel it for you. You should say, Hey, by the way, I've noticed you haven't been going to the gym. Would you like to say 50 pounds a month? Yes, I would. Thank you. That's where internet of things becomes useful. I notice you've got subscriptions for a magazine you've never opened. Yeah, I'm looking at a pile of those now. Yeah. Or did you know you're paying for a streaming service that you've never watched? Does that sort of thing is really useful? Yeah. Instead of having to go into use switch, we've switched you. Yep. So the best energy provider, we know that you're interested in green renewables and they do do this. We are automatically putting you on the cheapest tariff. Let's say there's some really good things. Yeah, there's some really good things. And the thing about tariffs is actually where the regulation needs to come in. Just say all electricity people must display your bills in the same way so that we can actually directly compare one thing for another. Same with mobile providers. We're going to switch you to a different mobile provider because to be honest, the one that you're using, Hey, you've never got any signal and B, they're more expensive than these guys, and that would make you think about all of those things in your life where it could easily be managed by an AI. You've got to trust that the AI is not going to tickle you a little bit, but that's where we're wanting to get to, isn't it? There's a lot as well in the beauty industry that they're trying to use the internet of things, which isn't working brilliantly well, but you've talked about self-regulating and self mending. This is what they're talking about. So your hair brush knows what your hair needs and it makes the right shampoo. Your Maskcara brush knows how your skin was doing, and so you get the right getting product made few each day, depending on what it is you've been doing. If you've had a really heavy weekend, it might be a bit different for me if you've been eating, if only it had been eating your OB genes. So we can see that that could be a vast amount of benefits, even just really simple benefits and that's not taking into account all the industry, you know, business benefits of only ordering the amount of parts. Is that too that you're going to need all of that optimization of the supply chain? Yeah, so there's no lead time required. That's the brilliance of industry is the self-regulating and itself mending. It's going to half production time. I think there was some wonderful word that also came up around that that I quite liked and one was cyber physical. That's what the internet of things is going to become. And the other thing is digital harmonization. I love the fact that we are so digitally unharmed and ISED at the moment. How many times do we shout at our devices, but apparently the internet of things is going to bring in digital harmonization. That's amazing. In the building of ergonomic buildings, they know where the desks should be, they know how the plants should be, they know what lighting is required at different times of the day for you so you don't come out feeling exhausted because the data and the AI and the technology have given you the best possible environment to be in and at the same time, but in saving the planet because they haven't had to overdo things. So I got in infrastructure and property development or office developments, infrastructure in general, we can all see the benefits of it. It's just, I don't think we're quite there yet. A with the AI don't think it's advanced enough to be able to process enough data points to make actual decisions that aren't quite narrow and limited as well is that we don't know how to train the people to do these things. There's got to be a whole generation of a new workforce trained up to do these things and at this point they're not being trained. So we're a generation away at least, but isn't life going to be smooth and harmonize for our children? For our children's children, yes. We haven't all been submerged under the ever-rising seas. Oh well hopefully AI and internet of things would deal with that as well. Yes. All the things we will just sit around having tea. The thing that's interesting and actually really one to watch is the Japanese, the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 when they last had the Olympics, they were so forward and what they did, they built their bullet train. It was massively advanced in everything it did and now the way they're going to use AI and internet of things for crowd control, virtual guides, they're creating the athlete's village to a zero emissions zone. And so they really are using the Olympics as a showcase of their technology, interestingly, as well as their people. But it got me thinking about the crowd control and how 20 years ago we worked with a company that were doing exactly that. They were able to predict how a crowd would be and therefore funnel people off in different directions, I hope. Yeah, and they had really interesting things, like if you put little, not barrier, but like a bollard and you angle it slightly and it changes the way people move. Just really subtly. I found that really fascinating, but now they've got so much more data points and they can do it live where you can actually move that barrier and change its angle according to where you want people to go is really interesting. Yeah, very clever. And save lives. Yeah. I think we're going to have to go there though, but I look forward to speaking to you next week. Yes, it's pretty nice rate trio.

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Dan & Abi work, talk & dream in tech. If you would like to discuss any speaking opportunity contact us.