Internet is supposed to be enabling digital communication from people to people. Though it is computers that enable the communication, the information is created and consumed by humans in traditional Internet.
Now that it changing. A CCTV camera continuously streams its video online, a car engine sensor gets regular statistics of the health of the engine and uploads the data to cloud. That data is used by the car company and the car owner to view reports on-demand. An arm band continuously monitors the vital statistics and creates an online database. Automated sensors, surveillance devices, tracking devices, weather sensors, traffic monitors and every other smart equipment are connected to the global network so that they can create, upload, process and interpret the data to produce useful information. This is the network of things. This is so called Internet of Things (IOT) that is hailed as the new face of Internet.
Billions of devices are being added every year, trillions of bytes of data are being added to the ever growing cloud and scores of new applications are coming up regularly has caused unprecedented explosion in the size, scope and versatility of Internet.
IoT is largely fueled by development in software, evolution of cheap devices, creation of smart services and enhancement in data analytics capabilities. It is also enabled by the new technologies such as IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6), Semantic Web, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning etc.
IoT is the bedrock on which modern technological phenomena such as smart cities, industrial automation & surveillance, home surveillance, remote assistance, tele-medicine etc are based.
The IoT devices or sensors (basically the Things in the IoT) are typically low-power, low-storage devices that specializing sensing a specific data and uploading that. They do not have the power or storage capability to carry out sophisticated calculations or retain data for long. They just sense and upload the data. That is why the cloud infrastructure and big data analytics are important for IoT. They enable storage and processing of the vast amount of data generated by millions of Things and help create meaningful information for consumers. Distributed cloud storage, distributed computing and on-demand access are thus the major technologies that help make IoT meaningful and fruitful.
As the applications and services grow more sophisticated and advanced, the overall intelligence and capability of the IoT ecosystem also shall grow. It shall also lead to more automation, data analytics and more tangible results of artificial intelligence.
However, once dozens of devices on our bodies, homes, offices and cities start monitoring every aspects of our lives and activities, the risk of breach of privacy also grows exponentially. It also creates opportunities for unscrupulous businesses and individuals to compromise our personal data and use that for business gains. Such business gain can be reaped by the party directly or can also be sold over to a different party for money. Something similar but probably much more sinister than the incident related to Cambridge Analytica in 2017.
So, as technology becomes more prevalent in our lives, we also need to be more aware, careful and prudent in our use of the facilities.
9:18 PM, 20 September 2018
Kathmandu
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