The “Internet of Things” and the Future

The article that inspired this post can be found here (though it should be noted I will not reference this article very much; most of this post is based on research): http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/03/21/microsoft-corporation-bets-big-on-the-internet-of.aspx

Sometime between March 16 and 19, during their recent four-day Convergence 2015 conference in Atlanta, Microsoft announced its plans to become a major player in the booming Internet of Things (IoT) market.  They unveiled their new Azure IoT Suite, a “cloud service which will enable billing, monitoring, analytics, and predictive maintenance in IoT deployments”.  With the rising popularity of the Internet of Things as a concept and a relatively young field of study, it makes sense that Microsoft – and any other tech giant – would want to jump on board with this.

Let me back up a little.  For the uninitiated, the Internet of Things is a notion/field of study that envisions everything – I mean everything – being connected to the internet in some way.  Not just phones, computers, tablets, game consoles, or key medical devices; with IoT, we’ll be seeing cars, refrigerators, books, shipping packages, and tons of other things being linked to the internet in some way.  In some cases, it’ll just be a matter of tagging, sort of like a step up from RFID tags.  But in the case of bigger and more complex devices, there are many more possibilities.  An IoT-enabled fridge, for example, might be able to detect exactly how much food there is inside, and exactly what each food item is (naturally, this would likely require the containers for each food item to be tagged).  The IoT fridge, more importantly, should also be able to tell when certain foods have expired.  Interestingly, there is also the notion that one can use an IoT-enabled fridge to order things off the internet, though whether or not that is actually necessary is open to debate.

And of course, it’s not just refrigerators that’ll be changed so radically.  The Internet of Things can add countless features to various objects that weren’t normally connected to the internet to begin with; in fact, some IoT technologies are already being made and sold today.  As a part of the Scholars program here at Stevens, I have had to do some research in an area of my choice, and the Internet of Things is indeed what I have been researching.  I have seen many other potential applications of IoT in my research, such as the “smart” wheelchair, which has a Raspberry Pi as the master controller and can be controlled via the internet and a joystick.  I believe that we will be seeing a lot more of the Internet of Things and devices connected by it in the not-too-distant future.

Of course, there exist quite a few barriers that stand in the way of IoT reaching its true potential.  IoT-enabled devices will all need IP addresses, but on IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4), we are running out of those; therefore, a faster and wider adoption of IPv6 would be needed.  Also, millions of devices connected to the internet means there will be a lot of data that needs to be stored in servers; this would require large data storages, and by extension, quite a few large investments.  Finally, a lot of personal information will be stored online thanks to IoT, which will inevitably tempt hackers.  As a matter of fact, privacy and the security of this information are considered by most to be the biggest issues IoT faces.  Regardless, there is plenty of potential for growth here; we’ll have to wait and see what the future holds, but I’m willing to bet that the Internet of Things will be a big part of it.