On a semi-regular basis, I get updates from IFTTT (If-This-Then-That, an app that lets you mash stuff up), mostly announcing their new channels. They've gotten pretty eyebrow-raising. Today's is kind of magnificent:
"The GE Appliances Cooking Channel lets your oven communicate with you, no matter where you are."
I'm not quite sure if I find that more creepy or ridiculous, but the real humor comes in the suggested mashups, such as "Post a tweet when dinner is ready", which may set a new bar for Annoying Twitaholism.
The tech industry is talking about The Internet of Things more or less nonstop nowadays, but I'm beginning to get the sense that 98% of it is solutions in search of problems. Which means a shakeout is due in 3... 2... 1...
https://personaldemocracy.com/media/internet-things-do-theyre-told
Thanks: this is fine stuff for me to keep in the back of my head. One of the interesting aspects of building Querki is trying to figure out how to be more part of the solution than the problem...
The classic IoT is the netFridge. Sure, it would be great to know when you need to buy eggs or milk, but if you are the sort of person who will always put the eggs in the touch sensor tray and always put the milk on the milk scale, you are also the kind of person to just make a note on your smartphone that you should buy milk and eggs soon. Not to mention the Hard AI problem of recognizing the asparagus and the scallions and noting that the green beans are starting to rot.
Meanwhile there are six shared grocery list apps with real-time updating so you can add ice cream to the list while your partner is heading to the supermarket.
A lot IoT doesn't need to reach the cloud. But it does need lots of lots of spectrum, which is why I've become so involved in this in my professional life.
voice recognition with your smoke alarm would
allow you to say "I'm just cooking here!" to
shut the darned thing off. That would be a
turning point in civilization :-).
People get all excited, then it turns out it takes work to make things happen so folks wonder off and then we either get work done or nothing happens.