The Internet of Things

The Internet of Things describes the realisation (a few years back) that the majority of data flipping around the internet is generated by machines and not humans. Human-generated content includes emails, texts, photos etc. Machine generated content is everything else which generates information that is transmitted – a classic example is a sensor punching out information at a regular interval.

I think there needs to be two levels of further refinement to the concept of the Internet of Things:

1. Firstly, there needs to be a measure of how ‘far’ away from human intervention is the generation of certain automated data. For example if a sensor is designed by humans then although the information it generates is part of the Internet of Things it is only removed from human intervention by a first-order. What is more interesting is when the ‘machine’ that generates the data is further removed from human intervention, i.e. the product of machine learning or machine and/or software replication. And we will then see subsequent generations of machines, each further removed from human intervention. Pretty quickly our level of understanding and control will depreciate. Whether this will have any real consequences is moot.

2. Secondly, ‘silence’ in the Internet of Things is important. By silence I mean that humans will not be not required to see the data. Currently much of the data generated by machines in the Internet of Things is brought to the attention of humans. An example is some automatic sensor in a lighting system of a house which sends information and alarms to a smartphone app so the owner can modify various settings. Increasingly the use of the data will be automated and will by-pass humans, and thus appear silent to them.

Both of the trends described above lead to a very complex Internet, effectively a control system for the human ecosystem, over which humans have little control and understanding. We won’t have the luxury of turning off the Internet at any time (since we are already completely dependent upon it) either. We will just have to trust in the machines. Maybe some smart people can figure out how to model the whole thing.