Beyond the internet lies the internet of things

Just shut those eyes and imagine living in an interactive house where the alarm wakes you up and at the same time reminds the house to clean up itself, the dustbin goes on to empty itself, the oven is reminded to start baking, the engine of your car fires up on seeing you and the car knows the best route to take to your destination beating traffic,  your bulb is knowledgeable enough to turn off when you leave, oh yes the door shuts on its own and the television comes on when you return tuning to your very best channel. Maybe you’re thinking I’m just another joker playing tricks with your mind or rather another story teller narrating a fiction, Far beyond that. The world has gotten to one junction where the ‘impossibility’ has become another word more meaningless than the babbling of a toddler. We have sailed past that era when only human beings interact and share data with each other, now machines or rather things that should be dumb, physical devices all around the world communicate with each other making use of wireless internet connections; this is far beyond the internet, it is called the internet of things (IoT).  If you ever wake up with the thoughts that internet has changed our lives, think again because the internet of things is on a mission to overhaul our lives much more.

Iot And Where The Journey Started

Physical devices like watches, refrigerators, bulbs should be dumb. But when these things are imbedded with censors which add a level of intelligence to them as such causing such devices to communicate real time without being aided by human beings making use of internet connection; this is the basic idea behind the internet of things.

Internet of things is a household name for the billions of devices around the world that are now connected to the internet all sharing data. With the advancement of IoT, the thin line that separates reality and virtual reality is becoming blurred.

The IoT idea is not a totally recent idea, the idea to implant chips into physical devices was first brought to light in the 80’s and nothing was done about it until the 90’s when a group of Carnegie Mellon University students implanted chips in a vending machine so that from afar, the machine can notify them if drinks were available instead of trekking the distance only to realize that the vending machine has been emptied out.

The name Internet of Things was not living up to the expectation because of the bulky and high choking prices of these intelligent chips.

A decade later scientist found a way of reducing the chips to micro, nano and even Pico sizes coupled with the sudden slash in price and with this recent development, Iot is sweeping across the horizon like a giant storm turning everyday objects surrounding us into an ecosystem of information that will enrich our lives.

The Future Of Iot

The cloud of iot is not just hovering around the earth but its great shower is flooding the globe. With the invention of RFID tags having the capacity of communicating wirelessly and the IPV6 which is designed to provide enough IP address for everyday device the world can ever afford, one can confidently say that the future of iot will certainly be a sight that will razzle both the feeble and zestful mind.

Definitely, the industry Iot will grow bigger than what we now see because it is estimated that by 2025, about 50 billion devices will be connected to the internet, that is to say that there will be more devices connected to the internet than there are human beings.

With this sudden glimmer of light, it is certain that in the future, we’ll be dazzled the more with more wonders which will include but not limited to:

1. Smart City: a whole city powered by total automation ranging from a road that knows when to close by itself, cars driven by themselves, Gas stations that function on their own, street supermarkets not run by any human being, police check points without a single police officer yet cars are being checked by highly automated checking devices. This looks like another series of Marvel movies but not at all, it is the reality that has dawned on us.
2. Smart Houses: houses with doors that know when to and to whom it should open to, floors that have courtesy enough to welcome visitors, oven that knows when and what to bake, floor cleaning devices that sweep the floor spick and span.
3. Smart Industries: Production, packaging and distribution will soon have nothing to do with human involvement; devices connected to the internet will carry out these activities to perfection.
4. Smart transportation
5. Smart Banking and on and on.

The list can never be exhausted but the bottom line remains that everything will be wired up or connected wirelessly; architecture, energy, efficient sensing, cloud computing, and even international activities and soon, everything that can be automated will be automated.

Just like the early computers that blissfully ignored the internet at the turn of the century, anyone who will dismiss the internet of things will risk getting left behind. It is as fun as it is true that the storm of Iot is here and our best option is to usher it in.