Since the evolution of human kind, we have always been a class apart, not on the primordial scales of strength, speed or camouflage, but on the scale of wit, wisdom, and most important, in the ability to understand the phenomena around us in both the quantitative and qualitative fashion. What have we not accomplished?! We seem to have exhausted all the questions to which our oldest ancestors devoted their lives.
Amongst these advancements, we boast of various achievements in the sectors of society, culture, sciences, but most importantly, in technology. The star on the Christmas tree being the advent of smart phones. Oh what can they not do?! They make the phrase "world in my palm" a not so far fetched fantasy after all.
But in the past few years of their rise and domination on the technology sector, the advancement in technology seems to have stagnated. So, while most are content to exhaust our phone's resources in every way possible, one may ask the million bitcoin question that is a prerequisite of any breakthrough...
WHAT NEXT?
And recently, we may have found an answer. It is what is being called as the Internet of Things(IoT).
Imagine all the manufactured products we use everyday, inanimate and seemingly unchangeable. What if these "things" are not inanimate? What if they are a part of one huge network of things which makes it one giant artificial organism? That too, directly connected to us and in sync to our schedule, ready to come to our aid?! This is the basic idea of the IoT.
Imagine not just having a smart phone, but actually living in a smart home, where a simple information regarding a flight delay is relayed to your alarm which then rings later than it is supposed to so as to not disturb you, where a wave of your hands opens the curtains, where the door gets locked automatically sensing that no one is at home. Seems far fetched right?! But believe me, it isn't! Using various micro sensors and cameras embedded on all your appliances and utilities at your home, all your THINGS, this is far from impossible.
Such a huge advancement has more utilities than it is even worth counting, because one doesn't worry about the number of stars in the sky, but rather just lies down and enjoys their beauty! The application of IoT in energy management by analysing the user's power consumption, in medicine by using smart watches to calculate heartbeats, in traffic handling to avoid congestion are just the tip of the iceberg!
For all of us who have grown up reading ender's game and Frankenstein and are fan of movies like star wars and iRobot, IoT isn't just here to make our lives easier, it would also pave the way for the much awaited rise of the era of the Artificial Intelligence(AI).
