The automobile, home computers, the railroad, birth control – all of these reshaped our landscape, our lives, and our cultures. Each put new powers into our hands, and it is difficult to think about ourselves and our societies without these as reference points.
I’m not finished with my analysis of the Internet of Things, but this seems to be a good time to talk about powerful new capabilities that this new system of technologies (and people) will make possible. Like most inventions, the IoT can be adopted to make our lives better or worse. I’ll explore both in future posts, but I thought it would be good to create a list as a reference.
Proofs and evidence. In theory, more data should make things clearer. We should have proofs for our theories and evidence on which to base decisions. This will happen in many instances. However, anyone who has dealt with the classification of data understands that it is often the characteristics of the facts and the relationships between data points that is most revealing. Data alone will not provide the answers if we don’t create context and carefully frame our questions.
Transparency. There is an interesting short story by Damon Knight, “I See You,” where bad behavior is curtailed because virtually every human action is recorded and available for review. From the standpoint of video, we seem to be approaching this world as security cameras begin to saturate our businesses, our streets, our schools, and sometimes our homes. Beyond this sort of transparency, it also should become much easier to track payments and the transfer of goods. In theory, this should make bribery, embezzlement, identity theft, and other crimes more difficult to get away with. In practice, people are likely to find better ways of covering their tracks, and, of course, transparency works beyond those engaged in criminal activity to make it easier to invade privacy and apply social pressure.
More complete picture. There is a maxim in business: You get what you measure. What does this mean when measuring everything is possible? And what does it mean beyond business? One clue comes from the imaginative work of individuals who create mash-ups. These applications often provide value that professionals and experts miss. In the future, we are likely to have questions and curiosity emerging from crowds, filling in surprising blanks in our data sets. However, there is a risk of too much data. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, he provides an example of this, where too much data leads to poorer diagnoses by physicians.
Speed. Relative to the IoT era we are on the brink of, data is still slow and scarce. But soon data that people care about is much more likely to be available in real time. And that data, instead of taking days, weeks or years to collate and process, will provide accessible answers quickly. In fact, as the data builds up, predictions will be easier. In other words, we may get answers not just about what had happened or is happening, but what will happen. Intense resources have been devoted to weather prediction, and this provides a good example of what might be achieved in other key complex, dynamic systems in economics, public opinion, environmental management, and more. However, there will be a danger of people acting on incomplete information or pushing models to ridiculous lengths. We know that probability and chaos are part of the human world and the natural world. The improbable will continue to happen and chaos theory insures that the flapping of butterfly wings will lead to major, unanticipated consequences.
Optimization. Perhaps the most promising power that will emerge as we live in the world of the Internet of Things is the ability to respond to change. In particular to take into account the allocation of resources-both physical and services-when crises hit or expected situations failed to transpire. The ability to quickly redirect resources to society’s benefit will be at hand. However, we still will be at the mercy of our differences in values, politics, and raw power. Fairness is not guaranteed.
Availability. My reference to mash-ups hinted at this. A much broader proportion of the populace will be able to see and act on information. They will find new ways to take advantage of what they observe and what they learn. The key question here is whether algorithms that are developed will be widely available or tightly held by a few. We already see that in the financial markets people have advantages based on algorithms that are proprietary. This is not likely to change.
Context. Above all, I suspect that the Internet of Things will allow us to see relationships, histories, and environments that escape our attention today. We may know that things are connected, but our analytical brains and selective focus tended to discount the importance of more holistic perspectives. This is partly true because such perspectives are difficult to develop. But, with the assistance of other people, algorithms, processing power, and ubiquitous data, we should have the power to create bigger pictures. And these more complete points of view are likely to make both opportunities and emerging threats more obvious to us.
Discoveries. Having an Internet of Things will be like having in extra sense. It will open our eyes to new patterns, possibilities, problems, and principles. This is the biggest X factor of the Internet of Things because we can’t predict what will be revealed.