I’m trying to figure out what it means that our B-school is talking about the internet of things without mentioning spime-wrangling or the ethics of everyware.
“Here are the easy facts: In 2008, the number of Internet-connected devices first outnumbered the human population, and they have been growing far faster than have we. There were 13 billion Internet-connected devices in 2013, according to Cisco, and there will be 50 billion in 2020. These will include phones, chips, sensors, implants, and devices of which we have not yet conceived.”
“Most of our devices will be communicating on our behalf—they will be interacting with the physical and virtual worlds more than interacting with us. The devices are going to disappear into what we wear and/or carry. For example, the glasses interface will shrink to near-invisibility in conventional glasses.”
“Every part of our life will be quantifiable, and eternal, and we will answer to the community for our decisions. For example, skipping the gym will have your gym shoes auto tweet (equivalent) to the peer-to-peer health insurance network that will decide to degrade your premiums. There is already a machine that can read brain activity, including desire, in front of advertising by near/proximity. I have no doubt that will be placed into the Big Data databases when evaluating hand gestures, body language, and pace for presenting social objects for discussion/purchase/voting.”
“By 2025, we will have long ago given up our privacy. The Internet of Things will demand—and we will give willingly—our souls. Whether intended or not, the Internet of Things may be the ultimate affirmation of Juvenal’s observation in Satire 2 all that was really needed to keep the entire Roman Empire under control by the Emperor was as simple as ‘panem et circenses (bread and circuses),’ which Juvenal mused was the formula for the well-being of the population, and thus, a political strategy. This formula offered a variety of pleasures, such as: the distribution of food, public baths, gladiators, exotic animals, chariot races, sports competition, and theater representation. It was an efficient instrument in the hands of the Emperor to keep the population peaceful, and at the same time, give them the opportunity to voice themselves in these places of performance. It worked quite well for a few hundred years. Now, we have tacos and TV. Wearables and scannables by 2025? Same thing.”
“Positive things may be tempered by a growing reliance on outsourcing to technologies that make decisions not based on human concerns, but instead on algorithms (however influenced by our own past choices). We may begin to lose sight of our own desires or our own wills, like many of these drivers who we hear about who, because their GPS told them to, end up in the most unlikely places in the face of all sorts of real-world, contrary evidence. What will happen to our own senses of intuition, let alone our capacity to venture into the unknown, learn new things, and our ability to be still and quiet without being in constant relationship to one device or another.”