If the Internet of Things is the future, then I want no part of it!

The other day, I went to Best Buy.  I walked about in the store to look at some of the latest gizmos.  From flashy refrigerators and laundry machines, to snazzy coffeemakers, to cameras big and small, to phones and tablets, all of them made me feel like everything I own dates back to the Flintstones.  I worried that if I talked to a sales person there, whatever I say might comes across as Yabba Dabba Doo! ;)

And then there were all those gizmos with which you can watch your home from anywhere on the planet, set the thermostat, open the garage door, switch lights on and off.  The gizmos that are connected to the internet, and all you need is your smartphone.  They looked cool.  And, at the same time, it is freaky!!!

I am not the only one who is uncomfortable about the future that is already here:

It is already possible to buy Internet-enabled light bulbs that turn on when your car signals your home that you are a certain distance away and coffeemakers that sync to the alarm on your phone, as well as WiFi washer-dryers that know you are away and periodically fluff your clothes until you return, and Internet-connected slow cookers, vacuums, and refrigerators. “Check the morning weather, browse the web for recipes, explore your social networks or leave notes for your family—all from the refrigerator door,” reads the ad for one.
Welcome to the beginning of what is being touted as the Internet’s next wave by technologists, investment bankers, research organizations, and the companies that stand to rake in some of an estimated $14.4 trillion by 2022—what they call the Internet of Things (IoT).

I used to have a coffeemaker that had a simple clock-driven program feature--load up the coffee and water in the night before going to sleep, set it switch on at a certain time and, presto, the coffee is ready waiting for me in the morning.  I hated that, and stopped programming it.  It felt, yes, freaky.  I was missing my connection to the experience of brewing coffee through all the steps, and being there as the first drops percolated through and as the wonderful aroma of coffee started wafting through the home.   The Internet of Things take that programmable features to a dimension that no man has ever gone before.

These gizmos are slowly creeping up on us:

One reason that it has been easy to miss the emergence of the Internet of Things, and therefore miss its significance, is that much of what is presented to the public as its avatars seems superfluous and beside the point. An alarm clock that emits the scent of bacon, a glow ball that signals if it is too windy to go out sailing, and an “egg minder” that tells you how many eggs are in your refrigerator no matter where you are in the (Internet-connected) world, revolutionary as they may be, hardly seem the stuff of revolutions; because they are novelties, they obscure what is novel about them.

Many of these novelties that are tethered to the internet are simultaneously devices that in turn keep track where we are at any moment.  (Even now, the location info in my smartphone is one that I always keep in the off mode unless I really, really, need that feature.)

as human behavior is tracked and merchandized on a massive scale, the Internet of Things creates the perfect conditions to bolster and expand the surveillance state. In the world of the Internet of Things, your car, your heating system, your refrigerator, your fitness apps, your credit card, your television set, your window shades, your scale, your medications, your camera, your heart rate monitor, your electric toothbrush, and your washing machine—to say nothing of your phone—generate a continuous stream of data that resides largely out of reach of the individual but not of those willing to pay for it or in other ways commandeer it.

Freaky!

in September Apple offered a glimpse of how the Internet of Things actually might play out, when it introduced the company’s new smart watch, mobile payment system, health apps, and other, seemingly random, additions to its product line. As Mat Honan virtually shouted in Wired:

Apple is building a world in which there is a computer in your every interaction, waking and sleeping. A computer in your pocket. A computer on your body. A computer paying for all your purchases. A computer opening your hotel room door. A computer monitoring your movements as you walk though the mall. A computer watching you sleep. A computer controlling the devices in your home. A computer that tells you where you parked. A computer taking your pulse, telling you how many steps you took, how high you climbed and how many calories you burned—and sharing it all with your friends…. THIS IS THE NEW APPLE ECOSYSTEM. APPLE HAS TURNED OUR WORLD INTO ONE BIG UBIQUITOUS COMPUTER.

So, where are we headed?

So here comes the Internet’s Third Wave. In its wake jobs will disappear, work will morph, and a lot of money will be made by the companies, consultants, and investment banks that saw it coming. Privacy will disappear, too, and our intimate spaces will become advertising platforms—last December Google sent a letter to the SEC explaining how it might run ads on home appliances—and we may be too busy trying to get our toaster to communicate with our bathroom scale to notice. 

First those evil corporations come for our toasters ...

The Flintstones era is looking better in the rear-view mirror, but is fading rapidly.

But, hey, only twenty-five more years! ;)

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