April 5, 2019 • 39 mins
What is the Internet of things? What sort of devices could be linked to the Internet? Could the Internet of things eliminate privacy? Join Jonathan and Chris as they explore a future wherein common objects may communicate with the internet.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
how Stuff Works, and I heart radio and I love
all things tech. And today it's time for another classic
episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally published on May nine,
(00:26):
two thousand twelve. And boy howdy, this is gonna be
a doozy of one to listen to. It is the
Internet of Things episode, so that's changed a lot since
two thousand twelve. I think it will be quaint to
hear how Chris and I interpreted the Internet of Things
(00:48):
seven years ago. Hope you guys enjoy. Let's listen in
a while ago about maybe almost twenty years ago. Is
is mid nineties? Yeah, Uh, listened to the founder of
mind Spring Enterprises, which was an Internet service provider here
in the United States. His name is Charles Brewer, and
(01:08):
he was talking about how in the future, um, and
he wasn't talking distant future, you know, he was talking
realistically in the next few years. He was saying in
the mid nineties, uh, that you would have stuff in
your house. It wouldn't just be you connecting to the
Internet to use email or the web. He said, in
(01:29):
the next few years, your stuff is going to be
connected to the Internet and it's going to talk to
one another. And you know, he was talking about appliances
and things, and I thought, well, that's kind of weird.
I mean, how would you do that. Um, of course,
at the time, we were still in a very dial
up world where you had to have a modem attached
(01:49):
to your computer or built into your computer that dialed
over the phone line and would you know, connect to
the Internet. And it was very slow and it was
very spotty, and you know, it worked pretty well. But
I thought, well that that would be kind of cool,
and it seemed, uh, you know, of course it's not
jet jet packs and uh, hoverboards, but it was at
(02:11):
the same time, you know, kind of far off in
my head because I was thinking, I don't you know,
I guess people would adopt that. I don't know, it
seems kind of cool to me. Well, as it turns out,
we really have moved on to that kind of a model,
although we're not quite there yet. But this is what
people call the Internet of Things. And the reason we're
(02:34):
talking about this is that actually was contacted by a
alien intelligence Yes, but that is not what I was
going to mention. You know, now they have to visit
me again, Chris, thank you so much, because I had
plans this weekend anyway. No, I was also contacted by
a tech conference to have a panel discussion about this
(02:58):
very topic, the Internet of Things. I thought, well, heck,
I'm I'm already preparing for that. Why don't we make
that a podcast as well? And here we are, so
let's talk a little bit about where we are right now. So, um,
we're still not at a point where everything is talking
to everything else, and there are a few different reasons
for that. I think one of the reasons is, uh,
(03:19):
like Chris was saying, you know, broadband rollout was probably
a little more gradual than we had anticipated when the
futurists were first starting to think about the possibilities of
the Internet of things. But that that's less of a
problem now for a good percentage of the population of
the United States, as well as for many other countries.
(03:40):
Clearly it's still a problem. Not everyone has broadband internet
access now. In some cases, the information that these different
products would be sending back and forth would be very
small packets of data, so perhaps broadband access isn't as important.
I remember because nostalgic cast a slight as a slight tangent.
(04:03):
I remember buying uh. You may remember this to the
the age of when, um there were publications like Yahoo
Internet Life back in the nineties when and there were
books too with Internet sites on them, and you would go, Okay,
so I got this Internet thing, what am I going
to do with it? One of the things I've had
in a book was this uh drink machine that was
(04:27):
hooked up to the Internet and you could and this
was all text. This is not you know, pretty worldwide
web stuff. This was you would ping the machine and
it would tell you how many of each drink it
had sold that day. And I was thinking, so you
can figure out how many people within the population of
that region had diabetes? Well it was a it was
(04:47):
a college campus. Now, okay, so all of them. But yeah,
so we're we're talking about remember when we've talked about
the early Internet, the the places that were wired, we're
basically government facility and um educational institutions. So yes, they
broad base facilities exactly. They had broadband people in the
(05:08):
the Computer Science Department and why are their drink machine?
And you could pin it, you know, because why not?
That's more or less to deal And that was why
it was interesting, because why not? But yeah, I mean,
and and it can be useful looking at it today
you can have a vendor looking at it. Okay, well
we don't need to restock this one today, we don't
(05:28):
have to send out there. Yeah you can, you could consolidate,
but back then it was just for fun. Right today
it makes a lot of sense. Like if you own
a vending machine company and you stock those vending machines
and you are able to look at a glance and
see where you need to send a delivery person in
order to restock those machines, then you may not need
as many delivery people on your staff because you don't
(05:51):
have to have someone go out and physically check each machine.
And and if the machines can alert you if something's wrong,
then you know to send someone out to repair it.
There are a lot of you know, you don't have
to wait for a call from a client or happen
or for your maintenance guy to happen upon it on
a on a scheduled series of rounds. Uh yeah, there
are a lot of different reasons for it. And then
(06:13):
we have the consumer side, like actual consumer products, not
just you know, commercial products, huh, and the possibilities that
that holds. And they're already products out on the market
right now that have some form of network capability. Um,
they don't tend to all work together necessarily, like you
(06:33):
might have a bunch of independent networks within your home network.
Right So for example, you could have a you can
be purchasing your appliances from a single company and you
get a washer and a dryer, and they have this
connectivity ability so that the washer and the dryer share
(06:54):
information with each other. So when you put a load
of laundry in the washer and you set it to
a particular kind of setting, like let's say it's permanent press,
it sends that information to the dryer, so that the
dryer already has the proper settings ready to go when
you transfer the wash from the washer dryer, so that
way you don't have to reset the dryer settings. It's
(07:15):
already taken care of. Uh. It might also even send
you an alert somehow through through the internet, so that
you know when your loads laundry are done. So you
might get a ping on a smartphone or a tablet,
or your computer, or if we're going to look into
the future a little bit, your television. Because you've got
internet connected televisions out there. It's only a matter of
(07:38):
time before we get to a point where these internet
connected televisions have a the ability to show alerts that
are related to other appliances that are in your house.
We're not quite there yet, but that's mainly because the
approach most companies are taking is to create a proprietary
communication protocol for their products. Right so Company A's products
(08:02):
do not communicate with Company bees products. So unless you're
buying everything from the same company, then the the communication
protocols aren't compatible and they don't understand each other. They
can't communicate. You need to C three PO right there
in the middle, because they can speak over six million
different languages, including vaporators. One of their first jobs was anyway, um,
(08:27):
the point being that you know, the odds of you
finishing that quote or yeah, never tell me the odds
Many both died to bring us this podcast. So the
the the different the different networks can't really communicate with
one another. So that's kind of where we are right now.
But we do have lots of products out there, including
ones like refrigerators that can talk to stoves and ovens.
(08:48):
So you've got again from the same company. So you
might have a refrigerator that's Internet connected and you think, well,
why would I want that? Well, if you have a
fridge that connects to the internet and it actually is
able to keep an inventory of the stuff that you
put within that fridge, you know, if there's some method
whether you know you want it to be as seamless
(09:08):
as possible, Ideally you would have a method in there
where when you put something in the fridge, it automatically
detected its presence, knew what it was, and logged it
so it would know when you put it in there, uh,
and it would know what it was, and even in
a real ideal situation, it would know when that product expires,
so it could tell you like, hey, you've got some
(09:30):
milk in the fridge. It's about to go bad because
it's muscling up to the potato salad, So you want
to make sure you're gonna go ahead and drink that. Um,
So just don't walk in on the mayonnaise. It's dressing.
That's right, boy. We were definitely punchy. We recorded an
episode that had more bloopers in it than the previous
the previous three years of recording combined, so we're all
(09:51):
punchy now. But anyway, Yeah, the fridge would be able
to keep you alert on what you have in your fridge.
It could even give you recipes for off that you
can make based upon what is in the refrigerator right now.
So for example, you might think, well, why am I
gonna have for dinner tonight and you could ask You
could ask your refrigerator and they could say, well, based
upon what you've got in the fridge, this is the
(10:12):
kind of stuff you can make. Or it may say
you could have this meal. You just need to go
out and buy this, this, and this, so the ingredients
are complete. And and with the possibility of purchasing stuff online,
you could even get to a point where you you
you authorize through your fridge purchases. Well, and and that's
(10:35):
the the Well, there are two sort of things that
are occurring to me to sort of funny things. Um.
One of which is there's no reason we can't do
this right now or or really a couple of years ago.
It's just we haven't UM, so it's not it's not
a technology that we're waiting for it to develop. Um.
This is all pretty simple stuff really when you get
(10:57):
right down to it. UM. The other the other promise,
I mean, this really could be a very convenient thing
if they go forward with it, because it's the kind
of thing that you're you're talking about that would make
life really easy if you have the money to buy
this kind of stuff and the services available to you.
So let's say you have, UM, your internet connected fridge
(11:18):
and the services necessary to complete this conversation. So you
got stuff in the fridge and some of it's starting
to expire, and you've used some of it. So uh,
there are f I D tags radio frequency identification tags
on your things. So you have UM milk and uh,
you have cheese and things like that, and as you
(11:38):
use it up, the fridge realizes, hey, it's no longer
in the fridge. UM, So I'm going to Uh. Jonathan
has already said that he wants more milk as soon
as he runs out of milk. So I'm going to
place an order with the local shopping delivery company and
they're just gonna bring Jonathan more milk. And they're gonna
build it to his card, so he gets a regular
delivery of milk because he's out and uh, the fridge
(12:02):
has automatically told his local delivery company, Hey, uh, he
needs milk and celery and other stuff you know that
he's run out of or he wants to make this
this meal. Um. So really this could be ultra convenient
because you could just have stuff show up, go ahead
and put it in the fridge, and it just runs
on a normal cycle like that, so you don't have
to make shopping trips and uh, you don't have to
(12:24):
look through the fridge to identify what you're gonna eat.
But that's all sort of well what if, because in
the in the nineties, when um, these types of delivery
services we're starting to take off, it was kind of
early for them to do so. And I think it's
scared a lot of people, which is why you don't
they're they're sort of hit or missed. They're in some
(12:45):
places but not another's. They're in the neighborhood down the street,
but they won't deliver to your house. Back in the day,
they expanded too quickly. They got they got so large
that they weren't able to uh to handle their own
the they weren't able to administrate the size of the
company and so as a result, they eventually collapsed in
(13:05):
on themselves. Because it's not a cheap business to be in.
You know, it's a lot of warehouse management, a lot
of deliveries. Uh, it's it's a tricky business. But also
I was going to mention that the other possibilities, So
we would talk you mainly about just the fridge interacting
with the Internet, but it could also interact with the
other appliances in your home, for example, your stove. So
(13:27):
let's say that you have determined that you know, the
fridge is suggested, Hey you've got the right ingredients here
for a pot roast. Uh, and heck, you can even
have a crock pot that has Internet connectivity. And so
it starts the it starts the croc pot heating up
at the right time so that you just all you
do is dump them the ingredients into it and you
(13:48):
and you walk away. Um, or you have you wanna
you wanna end up like baking something, and so it
ends up sending that information to the oven when you're prepared,
so that way the oven starts to preheat while you're
actually getting your ingredients together, and you never had to
go and turn anything on yourself. It's all controlled because
(14:08):
the devices themselves are aware of what it is you're
trying to do. So this is sort of the promise
of the Internet of things in general. But you know
what we're talking about appliance is that the reason why
we're talking about that is because those are things that
exist on the market right now. The same sort of
thing is true for experiences. If you have, say a smartphone,
a tablet, and maybe even a video game console or
(14:31):
set top box. Uh, you can have these sort of
experiences right now within a separate kind of network. So
let's use Netflix as an example. All right, Let's say
have a Netflix account, and I have access to a
Netflix film or television show on my smartphone, and I'm
watching it, and then I stop, you know, I pause
in the middle, and then a little bit later, I
(14:52):
pick up my tablet and I watch a little bit
more of it. It picks up right where it left off,
and then I pause. And then when I get home,
I turn on my TV and set top box that
happens to have Netflix capability, and I start and it
picks up again. Right where I left off, and so
this is an experience that continues and it doesn't matter
what the context is. It follows me. It's context independent,
(15:13):
so I don't have to worry about fast forwarding to
get to the right section, so I can pick up
where I left off. It's going to just do that automatically.
This is a really valuable experience to consumers, and it's
the sort of thing that the Internet of Things really promises,
is this idea of a seamless experience where you go
from environment to environment and the environment adjusts to you
(15:36):
and gives you the experience you want um based upon
whatever your preferences are, and it may be that you
have to express those preferences in a very um ordered way.
And in fact, I would guess that the early early
versions of this technology are going to require a lot
of input on our part to be to work correctly.
But future systems will have a lot of learning behaviors
(15:59):
built into them so that based upon your behaviors in
the past and the things that you've already done, they
can anticipate what you want in the future and start
to set things up so that they will be ideal
for you before you even are necessarily conscious of it
and UH and we're seeing some of that too, Like
the Nest thermostat is a good example. So Nest thermostat
(16:20):
is a programmable thermostat that has some learning algorithms in
it that can, you know, based upon the way you
adjust the thermostat throughout the day, can start to automatically
make those adjustments for you. And you can also at
any time going and manually change it, either in the
(16:40):
house or building yourself, or you can even access it
over the internet. So there are opportunities there for other
appliances that do similar things to to do that. And
then we've got other possibilities as well. For example, that
you you're watching TV and you see a product on
tell Vision and you know you are the ultimate impulse
(17:02):
buyer and you think, I want that. Well, with the
Internet of Things, you can get to a point where
and a lot of companies have been trying to do this,
figure out a way where you can if you see
something on the screen that you want, you can indicate
I want that and then go and purchase it, UH
in a very easy, seamless way so that you don't
have to open up a tablet or or smartphone application
(17:25):
or pop open a computer in order to say this
thing I saw on TV, I want that make that mine. Um,
my TV provider already does that to some extent. Yeah, yeah,
there's there's some of that built in. It's it's still
not widespread and it's still not truly seamless, but it's
getting better. And that's another thing where we expect to see.
(17:47):
But when we talk about the Internet of things, you
have to think bigger than that. Like we're still talking
appliances and and you know, entertainment centers and stuff, so
radio's TVs and computers and all that. But but this
is really about putting computers and sensors and actuators in
lots of things. We have a lot more to say
about the Internet of things, but first let's take a
(18:08):
quick break to thank our sponsor. Well, one of the
I would say one of the most mature Internet of
things environments is the smart home, where you've got uh,
you know, your lights, your climate control, your garage door, um,
(18:32):
your the locks on your front door. Sh leg link
system that you uh you wrote on that for the
for the website. I'm not there's a you know, there's
a a schleg lock article I wrote, and it was
a few years ago about a system because it was
something I saw at c e S where you could
access the lock on your front door from the internet
(18:53):
and from a smartphone, you could unlock your door. So
let's say that you have a repairman showing up at
a certain time, Uh, you could, uh, you can unlock
the door for that person. You can also do things
like set up pass codes, temporary pass codes that would
only work within a certain block of time and outside
of that they would no longer work. So that way,
you could give a pass code to someone so that
(19:13):
they could, you know, maybe walk your dogs or what
are your plants or whatever it is, and then as
soon as as soon as that time expand, it is over,
it'll just automatically lock again. So yeah, I mean that's
that's the sort of stuff that you can see in
a smart home. That and alarm systems things like that
you can you can watch um uh it's easy to
if you have the camera setup, you can see what's
(19:35):
going on at your home. Um. If if you're like
me and you go, did I turn on the alarm?
Did I lock the door? You can do you can
take care of it. You know, if you get down
the road, you can pull over and get on your
smartphone and make sure that you lock your door and
make sure that you turn the alarm on, UM and
maybe the stove off, you know, those kinds of things.
And that's something that that is already pretty well established
(19:58):
in the market. Also, U the smart meters that they've
been putting in a lot of cities where um, they
don't have to send out a meter reader to your
to check your electricity. They can check that from AFAR.
And what what's funny to me is that it didn't
move quickly enough for Google and Microsoft, who have now
shut down their services. Well, I think that was mostly
because the uh, the companies that installed the smart meters
(20:20):
were not willing to share with Google and Microsoft um,
and the two companies were just saying, you know what,
if you guys aren't gonna help us out, we're gonna
shot these down and we're not going to mess with
it anymore. But I think that will eventually come back.
But cars too, are our online in ways that they
hadn't been before. And and again, if we're talking about
(20:41):
the future, you can imagine a system, a system where
cars all have technology UH installed, whether it's retrofitted or
just off the assembly line where there are there can
be sensors like collision detection sensors and alarm systems. There
can even be override systems where UH the you know,
(21:03):
we've seen this with like Google self driving cars. You
can you can imagine that being incorporated into vehicles off
the line where UM if you wanted to, you could
engage it so that the car drives itself and because
as these other UH sensors, it can navigate through traffic
without there being a danger of a collision, especially if
all the other cars are also on the same system.
(21:25):
Then you've got a computer that can manage everything so
that you get to where you're going in the most
efficient manner possible, which would be a huge relief. You know,
theoretically you could avoid traffic jams because a lot of
traffic jams depend upon human behavior and not necessarily something
UH that's actually actively blocking the street, although that could
(21:49):
happen too if there were if there were an incident
where something was blocking the street, then obviously that would
still be a problem, although a really robust system could
potentially navigate around that so that the the the impact
would be minimal on traffic. Uh. And you could also
see sensors being built into the infrastructure itself, so not
(22:11):
just the cars, but in streets uh and in the
you know, signs, things like that, so that it could
uh there, the system itself could maintain how much traffic
is going across it on a given day, help change
things like traffic light patterns. Um. So you're talking about
(22:32):
a system that's much more flexible and can change on
the fly. Uh and possibly possibly helps cities like Atlanta
with their horrible, horrible traffic problems. Atlanta's way up there, guys,
Los Angeles, Atlanta. I mean, we're we're hurting, and we
we could we could use the help. So so I
(22:53):
had some statistics. Let me read you them all right? UM.
Actually was if you if you're interested in reading more
about the Internet Things, I would also recommend um read
right Web, which is one of my favorite tech sites anyway.
But they have a whole section on Internet of Things articles.
UM and uh they had one where they quoted statistics
from the g s M A of All People. UM.
(23:15):
This is an organization. Uh you might know from our
other podcasts about cell phones. Um, but they're studying how
well connected things are because well, an internet of things
would be beneficial for them because they are the kinds
of things that you would manage through a smartphone. So
it's it's definitely something that they're interested in. Um. They
said that, uh, in twenty eleven, there were about nine
(23:38):
billion devices connected to the internet around the world. About
six billion of them are are something that you can
carry with you. But by they expected uh twenty four
billion connected devices and about half of those would be mobile. UM.
So it's definitely something that is that is growing exponentially. UM.
(23:59):
But it's at the same time, it's it's one of
those things that they're they're you know, as long as
everything is working the way it's supposed to and people
are behaving themselves, it's great because it can be real
time saving. UM. It can give you opportunities to to
do other things with your time and with your money
and really improve efficiency and turn things off that don't
(24:22):
need to be powered on electricity. You could improve your
quality of life to all kinds of people. Yeah, and
uh so yeah, there are a lot of potential benefits.
I mean, and we're still not even finished with all
the possibilities. I mean, there could be sensors built into
clothing should tell the clothing when it's dirty and when
(24:42):
it needs to be washed, and it could well what
would work great until you wash it and then you
know short circuits. Well, yeah, you got you have to
build in the right kind of fabrics so that you
can wash it. But we could get to a point
where sensors are built into clothing so that when you
put them in the washer, the washer detects from the
sensors what kind of clothing they are, what kind of
cycle it needs to go through. So then you get
(25:02):
to a point where you know, you just need a
robot to disrobe you and put it into the washer
and other and then you don't have to do anything else. Thanks, yeah,
she needs a bonus. So the yeah, there's there are
a lot of different things that could happen. And and uh,
you know, we're talking about a point where these sensors
(25:23):
and these computer systems are pervasive. They need to be
both pervasive and transparent. And by that I mean for
this system to be something that works seamlessly. You don't
want to you don't want to see all the wires
what I'm getting at, So uh and and there are
a lot of companies working to kind of tackle that problem. Now,
there is another major concern that arises out of this
(25:47):
world of the future. Well, one of the concerns I
was thinking of. And I think it's not the one
that you're about to say, um, because I think the
other one that you're about to say is bigger. But
I mean it's, um, taking down the Internet at that
point becomes a much bigger deal, because I mean, you
see that all the time in uh, in corporate America.
(26:08):
You know, everybody has a computer on their desk now,
and then when something happens at the network, nobody gets
anything done. And that's going to happen when everybody gets
used to the Internet of things and suddenly there's a
network outage or power outage. I can't cook my fridge
won't tell me what to make exactly. And and yes
it's a joke, but people, once you get reliant on
(26:30):
that technology, when there is a glitch or a network
problem or something like that, it it throws us off. Um.
And it could you know, We've got all our traffic
lights and everything, all our traffic systems online, and oh
the power grid is overwhelmed and it shut down. Now
the internet out. That's the smart grid. See when you
(26:50):
have the smart grid than the power grid's fine, No, no, no,
you're you're totally right. And and of course a lot
of these systems, especially the ones that are related to infrastructure,
would bind a necessity require redundant systems that are even
if they are the old preconnected systems, there would be
necessary So for example, your smart grid traffic light system
(27:12):
may revert back to a pre smart grid version so
that it's still working. You know, it's still working, it's
just not it's just not flexible like it used to be. Um.
Or at least you get maybe the flashing red lights
and hopefully people treated like a four way stop in Atlanta.
That's a that's a hope that you make in Vain.
I'm to the point now where I'm not flexible like
(27:33):
I used to be either. No, I can't even put
on my own shoes anymore. Um. It also would be
a tantalizing target for a terrorist. And not just saying
that because it's alliterative, but it's the kind of thing
that that you know, if you're looking for a way
to disrupt people's lives and cause panic, that could do it, yeah,
if you're Yeah. Now, part of the part of the
(27:55):
defense of that is that the Internet is pretty darn
robust and and there are a lot of different ways
of working around problems. But if you were able to
find a way to, I don't know, inflict a widespread
virus that could, uh could come up the works, and
that could be enough to really make an impact. But
you know, trying to actually take down the Internet in
(28:16):
the sense of I want to target the Internet because
everyone's connected to it and if I if I shut
it down, then it's going to cause chaos. That's a
huge endeavor. I mean, that's not something that's easily done.
You know, the Internet is all around us and something
else that's all around us our ads. So we're gonna
listen to some. But yeah, the other big concern, the
(28:46):
major one that I think a lot of consumers should
keep in mind is privacy issues. So if you've got
an Internet of things, you've got all these sensors around you,
and you've and on you potentially um in the various
things that you're carrying or possibly even airing, well then
you could be you know, worried about your privacy because
because the same systems that can make the environment so
(29:07):
pleasant for us and to customize our experience in such
a way that we have the best sort of experience possible.
I mean, imagine walking through a building that automatically is
adjusting to your preferences so that the lighting is just
the way you would like it and the the ambient
(29:28):
noise is just what you would want. That's that's a
neat vision of the future. But it also means that
there's a system that knows that you are there. They
know when you're there, they know how long you're there,
they know when you arrived, they know where you came from,
they know where you went to. Because it's a If
it's a big system that's keeping track of all of this,
then it's keeping track of you. And as you move
(29:50):
around and interact with the various environments around you, there
is a record there. You are leaving a digital footprint
everywhere you go, and by necessity, that foot print has
to be identified with you on some level. It might
be a superficial level, but it has to be identified
with you because otherwise your experience isn't customized. That's the
point of doing it. Yeah, the whole point of doing
(30:12):
it is so that I Jonathan Strickland, as I walk
around in my life experience the best sort of outcomes
possible considering my preferences. Well, if they you know, if
if nothing is connected to me, then there's no that
all it's to use is tracking that there that someone
is moving around, but it doesn't know how to adjust
(30:32):
you know, the settings were anything to make it ideal
for me. So that's the trade off is do we
go with this world where we have this custom experience
to life? This the sort of idea where we have
truly manipulated our environment to the fullest extent possible so
that every person is getting as ideal and experience as
(30:53):
we can hope to achieve. But on the flip side,
every single movement you make is essentially and everything a
thing you do is essentially tracked. Now, there are a
lot of different ways to approach this, where you build
in security systems so that everything is encrypted so that yes,
everything is tracked, but it's not easy for anyone outside
to see what you did. Win, But there are big concerns.
(31:15):
I mean, what if you happen to be in an
area where a crime is committed and you don't even
witness it. You're not you're not a witness to this crime.
You were unaware that the crime had happened. And the
crime could be anything. Let's say it's robbery. So you
happen to be in the same place at the same
time as a robbery, but you're not in the exact
same area, but but it's tracked you there, and then
(31:39):
you happen to be late to something, so you make
a faster than normal egress from the area in order
to make your next appointment. And uh, it could very
well be the law enforcement when looking and reviewing records.
If you're leaving a digital footprint that can be traced
back to you could say, hey, this is a person
of interest because look, they were there at this particular time,
(32:01):
and then they left in a real hurry at at
that you know, shortly after the robbery took place. And
then next thing you know, you're being hassled about something
that you had no knowledge of. Or let's say that
you are doing something naughty, something that is frowned upon,
whether it's illegal or an ethical or whatever. Well, now
you've got a record of it everywhere. So some of
(32:25):
us who consider ourselves to be fairly ethical people might say,
you know, I understand, but I don't really do anything terrible,
so I don't see what that's a concern. Some people
who are truly ethical people will be saying, this is
an awful idea. I mean, whether I do anything wrong
(32:45):
is immaterial. I don't want there to be a system
that tracks everything I do all the time. I want
I want privacy in my life. And uh so that
that is a huge hurdle. I mean, do we do
we adopt this world to the future where we can
have this kind of experience, or do we shy away
(33:06):
from it because we don't want to have a living
record of everything we do every day until we're you know,
part of the environment as opposed to experiencing it. Yeah. Well,
and and that's, um, you know, that's one of those
conflicts that's difficult because the the um the benefits of
(33:28):
some of this technology are pretty obvious, and you say, well,
you know, I really like this stuff. I wish I
could do that, but I'm just not comfortable with giving
up my privacy. Um. I'm one of those people. Um So, yeah,
I mean I could, I could tell you from personal
experience that it's not it's not a simple question to answer. Um,
(33:49):
A lot of these technologies are are things that we
can implement without having to give up too much your privacy. UM.
And then others you know, uh, you have to go, well,
I'm gonna have to make a decision here one way
or the other. Yes, yeah, it's UM, it's it's definitely
an exciting time to see these developments take place. And
(34:09):
I think, you know, we we are looking at possibilities,
but we also have to remember that this is not
going to be a super fast transition and some stuff
probably just won't work. Because you can build the best
system in the world, but if people don't use it
the way you thought they were going to use it,
then it becomes a problem. And and that's one of
(34:31):
the things is that it's hard to predict user behavior
when you're first designing a system. I think a lot
of people were very skeptical of smartphone apps when smartphones
because a lot of the smartphone apps that first came
out were very much curiosities. They weren't necessarily that useful.
But now mobile apps, that is that is the thing.
(34:51):
I mean, that's the huge craze in tech right. I mean,
we're seeing big companies scoop up small mobile app companies
for billions of dollars because it's a big deal. So
if the Internet of Things takes a route similar to
the way smartphones and mobile technology and apps have, then
it's definitely gonna become something pervasive and hopefully more useful
(35:14):
than problematic. But it's also possible that the first few
implementations of this kind of technology could fall flat, that
they just don't work the way they were anticipated to.
And if it's if it's a big enough failure, it
may mean that we don't see this Internet of things
truly emerge because companies may shy away from it. Yeah. Well,
(35:36):
I mean, like like I was saying earlier, I mean,
there are some things that are already there. We're already
in the world. The thing is, there's I think it's
going to end up being a situation where consumer demand
drives a lot of things like the washer and dryer.
That situation where you know, the washer wood communicated, the dryer, Hey,
expect a load of permanent press it's coming. Um, you know,
(35:57):
that may not necessarily take off. You know, if it's
a five option and people go, I don't I'm not
going to spend it on that. Now, having an email
sent to you to tell you, hey, it's time to
change the clothes over sticking in the in the dryer. Um,
now that would be useful. So I think it's people
are gonna say why I want that? But I don't.
I mean, why would I want this? It may also
be one of those things where a lot of these
(36:18):
features end up getting built into all models. Eventually, like
it filters down so it no longer becomes like a
premium model of a particular appliance. It just becomes a
standard feature that you find across all models of that appliance.
And uh and in that case, um, you might end
up slowly adopting it, but uh, there are other times
(36:40):
where you might see companies just abandoned it. Another good
example of this is like three D television. You know,
there's there are a lot of television sets out there
that have three D built into them, but they're not
necessarily um marketed as three D TVs. Well, that that
might be what we see in the future with these
internet connected appliances, that it's just one of the features
(37:02):
of the appliance and it's not the selling feature, and
that it's not necessarily priced higher because of it. Um,
it's just one of the many things that comes with
that particular appliance. And the other thing that we'll have
to have is some sort of universal standard of communication
for this to truly work, or you're going to see
third party companies pop up and their specialty is creating
(37:26):
some sort of communication hub where different protocols can actually
work together with one another, at least on a superficial level. Uh.
And so my point there is that if manufacturers don't
start looking into ways where their technologies can talk to
other companies technologies, a third party is going to find
(37:47):
a way to make it happen, and then they're gonna
just explode. And that wraps up another classic episode of
tech stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed it. This is
what I was talking about if you listened a few
weeks ago, I mentioned that there were going to be
some upcoming classic epis zodes that would be a little
amusing to listen to in light of the years that
have passed. That's the challenging thing about picking classic episodes
(38:09):
of a technology podcast. Things change so quickly. But then
I thought, you know what, it's also an opportunity to
kind of reflect back on what are thinking was like
a few years ago and see how things have developed
differently than the way we anticipated, or sometimes how we
managed to actually hit upon how things are going to evolve.
(38:30):
I think we miss more frequently than we hit. There's
just too much that's unpredictable out there, but it's still
interesting to go back there. If you guys have any
suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, send me a message.
The address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
or pop on over to our website that's tech stuff
podcast dot com, where you'll find links to the social media,
you'll find all the archived podcasts. You'll find a link
(38:53):
to our online store. Check all that out and I'll
talk to you again really soon for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works
dot com.
Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
how Stuff Works, and I heart radio and I love
all things tech. And today it's time for another classic
episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally published on May nine,
(00:26):
two thousand twelve. And boy howdy, this is gonna be
a doozy of one to listen to. It is the
Internet of Things episode, so that's changed a lot since
two thousand twelve. I think it will be quaint to
hear how Chris and I interpreted the Internet of Things
(00:48):
seven years ago. Hope you guys enjoy. Let's listen in
a while ago about maybe almost twenty years ago. Is
is mid nineties? Yeah, Uh, listened to the founder of
mind Spring Enterprises, which was an Internet service provider here
in the United States. His name is Charles Brewer, and
(01:08):
he was talking about how in the future, um, and
he wasn't talking distant future, you know, he was talking
realistically in the next few years. He was saying in
the mid nineties, uh, that you would have stuff in
your house. It wouldn't just be you connecting to the
Internet to use email or the web. He said, in
(01:29):
the next few years, your stuff is going to be
connected to the Internet and it's going to talk to
one another. And you know, he was talking about appliances
and things, and I thought, well, that's kind of weird.
I mean, how would you do that. Um, of course,
at the time, we were still in a very dial
up world where you had to have a modem attached
(01:49):
to your computer or built into your computer that dialed
over the phone line and would you know, connect to
the Internet. And it was very slow and it was
very spotty, and you know, it worked pretty well. But
I thought, well that that would be kind of cool,
and it seemed, uh, you know, of course it's not
jet jet packs and uh, hoverboards, but it was at
(02:11):
the same time, you know, kind of far off in
my head because I was thinking, I don't you know,
I guess people would adopt that. I don't know, it
seems kind of cool to me. Well, as it turns out,
we really have moved on to that kind of a model,
although we're not quite there yet. But this is what
people call the Internet of Things. And the reason we're
(02:34):
talking about this is that actually was contacted by a
alien intelligence Yes, but that is not what I was
going to mention. You know, now they have to visit
me again, Chris, thank you so much, because I had
plans this weekend anyway. No, I was also contacted by
a tech conference to have a panel discussion about this
(02:58):
very topic, the Internet of Things. I thought, well, heck,
I'm I'm already preparing for that. Why don't we make
that a podcast as well? And here we are, so
let's talk a little bit about where we are right now. So, um,
we're still not at a point where everything is talking
to everything else, and there are a few different reasons
for that. I think one of the reasons is, uh,
(03:19):
like Chris was saying, you know, broadband rollout was probably
a little more gradual than we had anticipated when the
futurists were first starting to think about the possibilities of
the Internet of things. But that that's less of a
problem now for a good percentage of the population of
the United States, as well as for many other countries.
(03:40):
Clearly it's still a problem. Not everyone has broadband internet
access now. In some cases, the information that these different
products would be sending back and forth would be very
small packets of data, so perhaps broadband access isn't as important.
I remember because nostalgic cast a slight as a slight tangent.
(04:03):
I remember buying uh. You may remember this to the
the age of when, um there were publications like Yahoo
Internet Life back in the nineties when and there were
books too with Internet sites on them, and you would go, Okay,
so I got this Internet thing, what am I going
to do with it? One of the things I've had
in a book was this uh drink machine that was
(04:27):
hooked up to the Internet and you could and this
was all text. This is not you know, pretty worldwide
web stuff. This was you would ping the machine and
it would tell you how many of each drink it
had sold that day. And I was thinking, so you
can figure out how many people within the population of
that region had diabetes? Well it was a it was
(04:47):
a college campus. Now, okay, so all of them. But yeah,
so we're we're talking about remember when we've talked about
the early Internet, the the places that were wired, we're
basically government facility and um educational institutions. So yes, they
broad base facilities exactly. They had broadband people in the
(05:08):
the Computer Science Department and why are their drink machine?
And you could pin it, you know, because why not?
That's more or less to deal And that was why
it was interesting, because why not? But yeah, I mean,
and and it can be useful looking at it today
you can have a vendor looking at it. Okay, well
we don't need to restock this one today, we don't
(05:28):
have to send out there. Yeah you can, you could consolidate,
but back then it was just for fun. Right today
it makes a lot of sense. Like if you own
a vending machine company and you stock those vending machines
and you are able to look at a glance and
see where you need to send a delivery person in
order to restock those machines, then you may not need
as many delivery people on your staff because you don't
(05:51):
have to have someone go out and physically check each machine.
And and if the machines can alert you if something's wrong,
then you know to send someone out to repair it.
There are a lot of you know, you don't have
to wait for a call from a client or happen
or for your maintenance guy to happen upon it on
a on a scheduled series of rounds. Uh yeah, there
are a lot of different reasons for it. And then
(06:13):
we have the consumer side, like actual consumer products, not
just you know, commercial products, huh, and the possibilities that
that holds. And they're already products out on the market
right now that have some form of network capability. Um,
they don't tend to all work together necessarily, like you
(06:33):
might have a bunch of independent networks within your home network.
Right So for example, you could have a you can
be purchasing your appliances from a single company and you
get a washer and a dryer, and they have this
connectivity ability so that the washer and the dryer share
(06:54):
information with each other. So when you put a load
of laundry in the washer and you set it to
a particular kind of setting, like let's say it's permanent press,
it sends that information to the dryer, so that the
dryer already has the proper settings ready to go when
you transfer the wash from the washer dryer, so that
way you don't have to reset the dryer settings. It's
(07:15):
already taken care of. Uh. It might also even send
you an alert somehow through through the internet, so that
you know when your loads laundry are done. So you
might get a ping on a smartphone or a tablet,
or your computer, or if we're going to look into
the future a little bit, your television. Because you've got
internet connected televisions out there. It's only a matter of
(07:38):
time before we get to a point where these internet
connected televisions have a the ability to show alerts that
are related to other appliances that are in your house.
We're not quite there yet, but that's mainly because the
approach most companies are taking is to create a proprietary
communication protocol for their products. Right so Company A's products
(08:02):
do not communicate with Company bees products. So unless you're
buying everything from the same company, then the the communication
protocols aren't compatible and they don't understand each other. They
can't communicate. You need to C three PO right there
in the middle, because they can speak over six million
different languages, including vaporators. One of their first jobs was anyway, um,
(08:27):
the point being that you know, the odds of you
finishing that quote or yeah, never tell me the odds
Many both died to bring us this podcast. So the
the the different the different networks can't really communicate with
one another. So that's kind of where we are right now.
But we do have lots of products out there, including
ones like refrigerators that can talk to stoves and ovens.
(08:48):
So you've got again from the same company. So you
might have a refrigerator that's Internet connected and you think, well,
why would I want that? Well, if you have a
fridge that connects to the internet and it actually is
able to keep an inventory of the stuff that you
put within that fridge, you know, if there's some method
whether you know you want it to be as seamless
(09:08):
as possible, Ideally you would have a method in there
where when you put something in the fridge, it automatically
detected its presence, knew what it was, and logged it
so it would know when you put it in there, uh,
and it would know what it was, and even in
a real ideal situation, it would know when that product expires,
so it could tell you like, hey, you've got some
(09:30):
milk in the fridge. It's about to go bad because
it's muscling up to the potato salad, So you want
to make sure you're gonna go ahead and drink that. Um,
So just don't walk in on the mayonnaise. It's dressing.
That's right, boy. We were definitely punchy. We recorded an
episode that had more bloopers in it than the previous
the previous three years of recording combined, so we're all
(09:51):
punchy now. But anyway, Yeah, the fridge would be able
to keep you alert on what you have in your fridge.
It could even give you recipes for off that you
can make based upon what is in the refrigerator right now.
So for example, you might think, well, why am I
gonna have for dinner tonight and you could ask You
could ask your refrigerator and they could say, well, based
upon what you've got in the fridge, this is the
(10:12):
kind of stuff you can make. Or it may say
you could have this meal. You just need to go
out and buy this, this, and this, so the ingredients
are complete. And and with the possibility of purchasing stuff online,
you could even get to a point where you you
you authorize through your fridge purchases. Well, and and that's
(10:35):
the the Well, there are two sort of things that
are occurring to me to sort of funny things. Um.
One of which is there's no reason we can't do
this right now or or really a couple of years ago.
It's just we haven't UM, so it's not it's not
a technology that we're waiting for it to develop. Um.
This is all pretty simple stuff really when you get
(10:57):
right down to it. UM. The other the other promise,
I mean, this really could be a very convenient thing
if they go forward with it, because it's the kind
of thing that you're you're talking about that would make
life really easy if you have the money to buy
this kind of stuff and the services available to you.
So let's say you have, UM, your internet connected fridge
(11:18):
and the services necessary to complete this conversation. So you
got stuff in the fridge and some of it's starting
to expire, and you've used some of it. So uh,
there are f I D tags radio frequency identification tags
on your things. So you have UM milk and uh,
you have cheese and things like that, and as you
(11:38):
use it up, the fridge realizes, hey, it's no longer
in the fridge. UM, So I'm going to Uh. Jonathan
has already said that he wants more milk as soon
as he runs out of milk. So I'm going to
place an order with the local shopping delivery company and
they're just gonna bring Jonathan more milk. And they're gonna
build it to his card, so he gets a regular
delivery of milk because he's out and uh, the fridge
(12:02):
has automatically told his local delivery company, Hey, uh, he
needs milk and celery and other stuff you know that
he's run out of or he wants to make this
this meal. Um. So really this could be ultra convenient
because you could just have stuff show up, go ahead
and put it in the fridge, and it just runs
on a normal cycle like that, so you don't have
to make shopping trips and uh, you don't have to
(12:24):
look through the fridge to identify what you're gonna eat.
But that's all sort of well what if, because in
the in the nineties, when um, these types of delivery
services we're starting to take off, it was kind of
early for them to do so. And I think it's
scared a lot of people, which is why you don't
they're they're sort of hit or missed. They're in some
(12:45):
places but not another's. They're in the neighborhood down the street,
but they won't deliver to your house. Back in the day,
they expanded too quickly. They got they got so large
that they weren't able to uh to handle their own
the they weren't able to administrate the size of the
company and so as a result, they eventually collapsed in
(13:05):
on themselves. Because it's not a cheap business to be in.
You know, it's a lot of warehouse management, a lot
of deliveries. Uh, it's it's a tricky business. But also
I was going to mention that the other possibilities, So
we would talk you mainly about just the fridge interacting
with the Internet, but it could also interact with the
other appliances in your home, for example, your stove. So
(13:27):
let's say that you have determined that you know, the
fridge is suggested, Hey you've got the right ingredients here
for a pot roast. Uh, and heck, you can even
have a crock pot that has Internet connectivity. And so
it starts the it starts the croc pot heating up
at the right time so that you just all you
do is dump them the ingredients into it and you
(13:48):
and you walk away. Um, or you have you wanna
you wanna end up like baking something, and so it
ends up sending that information to the oven when you're prepared,
so that way the oven starts to preheat while you're
actually getting your ingredients together, and you never had to
go and turn anything on yourself. It's all controlled because
(14:08):
the devices themselves are aware of what it is you're
trying to do. So this is sort of the promise
of the Internet of things in general. But you know
what we're talking about appliance is that the reason why
we're talking about that is because those are things that
exist on the market right now. The same sort of
thing is true for experiences. If you have, say a smartphone,
a tablet, and maybe even a video game console or
(14:31):
set top box. Uh, you can have these sort of
experiences right now within a separate kind of network. So
let's use Netflix as an example. All right, Let's say
have a Netflix account, and I have access to a
Netflix film or television show on my smartphone, and I'm
watching it, and then I stop, you know, I pause
in the middle, and then a little bit later, I
(14:52):
pick up my tablet and I watch a little bit
more of it. It picks up right where it left off,
and then I pause. And then when I get home,
I turn on my TV and set top box that
happens to have Netflix capability, and I start and it
picks up again. Right where I left off, and so
this is an experience that continues and it doesn't matter
what the context is. It follows me. It's context independent,
(15:13):
so I don't have to worry about fast forwarding to
get to the right section, so I can pick up
where I left off. It's going to just do that automatically.
This is a really valuable experience to consumers, and it's
the sort of thing that the Internet of Things really promises,
is this idea of a seamless experience where you go
from environment to environment and the environment adjusts to you
(15:36):
and gives you the experience you want um based upon
whatever your preferences are, and it may be that you
have to express those preferences in a very um ordered way.
And in fact, I would guess that the early early
versions of this technology are going to require a lot
of input on our part to be to work correctly.
But future systems will have a lot of learning behaviors
(15:59):
built into them so that based upon your behaviors in
the past and the things that you've already done, they
can anticipate what you want in the future and start
to set things up so that they will be ideal
for you before you even are necessarily conscious of it
and UH and we're seeing some of that too, Like
the Nest thermostat is a good example. So Nest thermostat
(16:20):
is a programmable thermostat that has some learning algorithms in
it that can, you know, based upon the way you
adjust the thermostat throughout the day, can start to automatically
make those adjustments for you. And you can also at
any time going and manually change it, either in the
(16:40):
house or building yourself, or you can even access it
over the internet. So there are opportunities there for other
appliances that do similar things to to do that. And
then we've got other possibilities as well. For example, that
you you're watching TV and you see a product on
tell Vision and you know you are the ultimate impulse
(17:02):
buyer and you think, I want that. Well, with the
Internet of Things, you can get to a point where
and a lot of companies have been trying to do this,
figure out a way where you can if you see
something on the screen that you want, you can indicate
I want that and then go and purchase it, UH
in a very easy, seamless way so that you don't
have to open up a tablet or or smartphone application
(17:25):
or pop open a computer in order to say this
thing I saw on TV, I want that make that mine. Um,
my TV provider already does that to some extent. Yeah, yeah,
there's there's some of that built in. It's it's still
not widespread and it's still not truly seamless, but it's
getting better. And that's another thing where we expect to see.
(17:47):
But when we talk about the Internet of things, you
have to think bigger than that. Like we're still talking
appliances and and you know, entertainment centers and stuff, so
radio's TVs and computers and all that. But but this
is really about putting computers and sensors and actuators in
lots of things. We have a lot more to say
about the Internet of things, but first let's take a
(18:08):
quick break to thank our sponsor. Well, one of the
I would say one of the most mature Internet of
things environments is the smart home, where you've got uh,
you know, your lights, your climate control, your garage door, um,
(18:32):
your the locks on your front door. Sh leg link
system that you uh you wrote on that for the
for the website. I'm not there's a you know, there's
a a schleg lock article I wrote, and it was
a few years ago about a system because it was
something I saw at c e S where you could
access the lock on your front door from the internet
(18:53):
and from a smartphone, you could unlock your door. So
let's say that you have a repairman showing up at
a certain time, Uh, you could, uh, you can unlock
the door for that person. You can also do things
like set up pass codes, temporary pass codes that would
only work within a certain block of time and outside
of that they would no longer work. So that way,
you could give a pass code to someone so that
(19:13):
they could, you know, maybe walk your dogs or what
are your plants or whatever it is, and then as
soon as as soon as that time expand, it is over,
it'll just automatically lock again. So yeah, I mean that's
that's the sort of stuff that you can see in
a smart home. That and alarm systems things like that
you can you can watch um uh it's easy to
if you have the camera setup, you can see what's
(19:35):
going on at your home. Um. If if you're like
me and you go, did I turn on the alarm?
Did I lock the door? You can do you can
take care of it. You know, if you get down
the road, you can pull over and get on your
smartphone and make sure that you lock your door and
make sure that you turn the alarm on, UM and
maybe the stove off, you know, those kinds of things.
And that's something that that is already pretty well established
(19:58):
in the market. Also, U the smart meters that they've
been putting in a lot of cities where um, they
don't have to send out a meter reader to your
to check your electricity. They can check that from AFAR.
And what what's funny to me is that it didn't
move quickly enough for Google and Microsoft, who have now
shut down their services. Well, I think that was mostly
because the uh, the companies that installed the smart meters
(20:20):
were not willing to share with Google and Microsoft um,
and the two companies were just saying, you know what,
if you guys aren't gonna help us out, we're gonna
shot these down and we're not going to mess with
it anymore. But I think that will eventually come back.
But cars too, are our online in ways that they
hadn't been before. And and again, if we're talking about
(20:41):
the future, you can imagine a system, a system where
cars all have technology UH installed, whether it's retrofitted or
just off the assembly line where there are there can
be sensors like collision detection sensors and alarm systems. There
can even be override systems where UH the you know,
(21:03):
we've seen this with like Google self driving cars. You
can you can imagine that being incorporated into vehicles off
the line where UM if you wanted to, you could
engage it so that the car drives itself and because
as these other UH sensors, it can navigate through traffic
without there being a danger of a collision, especially if
all the other cars are also on the same system.
(21:25):
Then you've got a computer that can manage everything so
that you get to where you're going in the most
efficient manner possible, which would be a huge relief. You know,
theoretically you could avoid traffic jams because a lot of
traffic jams depend upon human behavior and not necessarily something
UH that's actually actively blocking the street, although that could
(21:49):
happen too if there were if there were an incident
where something was blocking the street, then obviously that would
still be a problem, although a really robust system could
potentially navigate around that so that the the the impact
would be minimal on traffic. Uh. And you could also
see sensors being built into the infrastructure itself, so not
(22:11):
just the cars, but in streets uh and in the
you know, signs, things like that, so that it could
uh there, the system itself could maintain how much traffic
is going across it on a given day, help change
things like traffic light patterns. Um. So you're talking about
(22:32):
a system that's much more flexible and can change on
the fly. Uh and possibly possibly helps cities like Atlanta
with their horrible, horrible traffic problems. Atlanta's way up there, guys,
Los Angeles, Atlanta. I mean, we're we're hurting, and we
we could we could use the help. So so I
(22:53):
had some statistics. Let me read you them all right? UM.
Actually was if you if you're interested in reading more
about the Internet Things, I would also recommend um read
right Web, which is one of my favorite tech sites anyway.
But they have a whole section on Internet of Things articles.
UM and uh they had one where they quoted statistics
from the g s M A of All People. UM.
(23:15):
This is an organization. Uh you might know from our
other podcasts about cell phones. Um, but they're studying how
well connected things are because well, an internet of things
would be beneficial for them because they are the kinds
of things that you would manage through a smartphone. So
it's it's definitely something that they're interested in. Um. They
said that, uh, in twenty eleven, there were about nine
(23:38):
billion devices connected to the internet around the world. About
six billion of them are are something that you can
carry with you. But by they expected uh twenty four
billion connected devices and about half of those would be mobile. UM.
So it's definitely something that is that is growing exponentially. UM.
(23:59):
But it's at the same time, it's it's one of
those things that they're they're you know, as long as
everything is working the way it's supposed to and people
are behaving themselves, it's great because it can be real
time saving. UM. It can give you opportunities to to
do other things with your time and with your money
and really improve efficiency and turn things off that don't
(24:22):
need to be powered on electricity. You could improve your
quality of life to all kinds of people. Yeah, and
uh so yeah, there are a lot of potential benefits.
I mean, and we're still not even finished with all
the possibilities. I mean, there could be sensors built into
clothing should tell the clothing when it's dirty and when
(24:42):
it needs to be washed, and it could well what
would work great until you wash it and then you
know short circuits. Well, yeah, you got you have to
build in the right kind of fabrics so that you
can wash it. But we could get to a point
where sensors are built into clothing so that when you
put them in the washer, the washer detects from the
sensors what kind of clothing they are, what kind of
cycle it needs to go through. So then you get
(25:02):
to a point where you know, you just need a
robot to disrobe you and put it into the washer
and other and then you don't have to do anything else. Thanks, yeah,
she needs a bonus. So the yeah, there's there are
a lot of different things that could happen. And and uh,
you know, we're talking about a point where these sensors
(25:23):
and these computer systems are pervasive. They need to be
both pervasive and transparent. And by that I mean for
this system to be something that works seamlessly. You don't
want to you don't want to see all the wires
what I'm getting at, So uh and and there are
a lot of companies working to kind of tackle that problem. Now,
there is another major concern that arises out of this
(25:47):
world of the future. Well, one of the concerns I
was thinking of. And I think it's not the one
that you're about to say, um, because I think the
other one that you're about to say is bigger. But
I mean it's, um, taking down the Internet at that
point becomes a much bigger deal, because I mean, you
see that all the time in uh, in corporate America.
(26:08):
You know, everybody has a computer on their desk now,
and then when something happens at the network, nobody gets
anything done. And that's going to happen when everybody gets
used to the Internet of things and suddenly there's a
network outage or power outage. I can't cook my fridge
won't tell me what to make exactly. And and yes
it's a joke, but people, once you get reliant on
(26:30):
that technology, when there is a glitch or a network
problem or something like that, it it throws us off. Um.
And it could you know, We've got all our traffic
lights and everything, all our traffic systems online, and oh
the power grid is overwhelmed and it shut down. Now
the internet out. That's the smart grid. See when you
(26:50):
have the smart grid than the power grid's fine, No, no, no,
you're you're totally right. And and of course a lot
of these systems, especially the ones that are related to infrastructure,
would bind a necessity require redundant systems that are even
if they are the old preconnected systems, there would be
necessary So for example, your smart grid traffic light system
(27:12):
may revert back to a pre smart grid version so
that it's still working. You know, it's still working, it's
just not it's just not flexible like it used to be. Um.
Or at least you get maybe the flashing red lights
and hopefully people treated like a four way stop in Atlanta.
That's a that's a hope that you make in Vain.
I'm to the point now where I'm not flexible like
(27:33):
I used to be either. No, I can't even put
on my own shoes anymore. Um. It also would be
a tantalizing target for a terrorist. And not just saying
that because it's alliterative, but it's the kind of thing
that that you know, if you're looking for a way
to disrupt people's lives and cause panic, that could do it, yeah,
if you're Yeah. Now, part of the part of the
(27:55):
defense of that is that the Internet is pretty darn
robust and and there are a lot of different ways
of working around problems. But if you were able to
find a way to, I don't know, inflict a widespread
virus that could, uh could come up the works, and
that could be enough to really make an impact. But
you know, trying to actually take down the Internet in
(28:16):
the sense of I want to target the Internet because
everyone's connected to it and if I if I shut
it down, then it's going to cause chaos. That's a
huge endeavor. I mean, that's not something that's easily done.
You know, the Internet is all around us and something
else that's all around us our ads. So we're gonna
listen to some. But yeah, the other big concern, the
(28:46):
major one that I think a lot of consumers should
keep in mind is privacy issues. So if you've got
an Internet of things, you've got all these sensors around you,
and you've and on you potentially um in the various
things that you're carrying or possibly even airing, well then
you could be you know, worried about your privacy because
because the same systems that can make the environment so
(29:07):
pleasant for us and to customize our experience in such
a way that we have the best sort of experience possible.
I mean, imagine walking through a building that automatically is
adjusting to your preferences so that the lighting is just
the way you would like it and the the ambient
(29:28):
noise is just what you would want. That's that's a
neat vision of the future. But it also means that
there's a system that knows that you are there. They
know when you're there, they know how long you're there,
they know when you arrived, they know where you came from,
they know where you went to. Because it's a If
it's a big system that's keeping track of all of this,
then it's keeping track of you. And as you move
(29:50):
around and interact with the various environments around you, there
is a record there. You are leaving a digital footprint
everywhere you go, and by necessity, that foot print has
to be identified with you on some level. It might
be a superficial level, but it has to be identified
with you because otherwise your experience isn't customized. That's the
point of doing it. Yeah, the whole point of doing
(30:12):
it is so that I Jonathan Strickland, as I walk
around in my life experience the best sort of outcomes
possible considering my preferences. Well, if they you know, if
if nothing is connected to me, then there's no that
all it's to use is tracking that there that someone
is moving around, but it doesn't know how to adjust
(30:32):
you know, the settings were anything to make it ideal
for me. So that's the trade off is do we
go with this world where we have this custom experience
to life? This the sort of idea where we have
truly manipulated our environment to the fullest extent possible so
that every person is getting as ideal and experience as
(30:53):
we can hope to achieve. But on the flip side,
every single movement you make is essentially and everything a
thing you do is essentially tracked. Now, there are a
lot of different ways to approach this, where you build
in security systems so that everything is encrypted so that yes,
everything is tracked, but it's not easy for anyone outside
to see what you did. Win, But there are big concerns.
(31:15):
I mean, what if you happen to be in an
area where a crime is committed and you don't even
witness it. You're not you're not a witness to this crime.
You were unaware that the crime had happened. And the
crime could be anything. Let's say it's robbery. So you
happen to be in the same place at the same
time as a robbery, but you're not in the exact
same area, but but it's tracked you there, and then
(31:39):
you happen to be late to something, so you make
a faster than normal egress from the area in order
to make your next appointment. And uh, it could very
well be the law enforcement when looking and reviewing records.
If you're leaving a digital footprint that can be traced
back to you could say, hey, this is a person
of interest because look, they were there at this particular time,
(32:01):
and then they left in a real hurry at at
that you know, shortly after the robbery took place. And
then next thing you know, you're being hassled about something
that you had no knowledge of. Or let's say that
you are doing something naughty, something that is frowned upon,
whether it's illegal or an ethical or whatever. Well, now
you've got a record of it everywhere. So some of
(32:25):
us who consider ourselves to be fairly ethical people might say,
you know, I understand, but I don't really do anything terrible,
so I don't see what that's a concern. Some people
who are truly ethical people will be saying, this is
an awful idea. I mean, whether I do anything wrong
(32:45):
is immaterial. I don't want there to be a system
that tracks everything I do all the time. I want
I want privacy in my life. And uh so that
that is a huge hurdle. I mean, do we do
we adopt this world to the future where we can
have this kind of experience, or do we shy away
(33:06):
from it because we don't want to have a living
record of everything we do every day until we're you know,
part of the environment as opposed to experiencing it. Yeah. Well,
and and that's, um, you know, that's one of those
conflicts that's difficult because the the um the benefits of
(33:28):
some of this technology are pretty obvious, and you say, well,
you know, I really like this stuff. I wish I
could do that, but I'm just not comfortable with giving
up my privacy. Um. I'm one of those people. Um So, yeah,
I mean I could, I could tell you from personal
experience that it's not it's not a simple question to answer. Um,
(33:49):
A lot of these technologies are are things that we
can implement without having to give up too much your privacy. UM.
And then others you know, uh, you have to go, well,
I'm gonna have to make a decision here one way
or the other. Yes, yeah, it's UM, it's it's definitely
an exciting time to see these developments take place. And
(34:09):
I think, you know, we we are looking at possibilities,
but we also have to remember that this is not
going to be a super fast transition and some stuff
probably just won't work. Because you can build the best
system in the world, but if people don't use it
the way you thought they were going to use it,
then it becomes a problem. And and that's one of
(34:31):
the things is that it's hard to predict user behavior
when you're first designing a system. I think a lot
of people were very skeptical of smartphone apps when smartphones
because a lot of the smartphone apps that first came
out were very much curiosities. They weren't necessarily that useful.
But now mobile apps, that is that is the thing.
(34:51):
I mean, that's the huge craze in tech right. I mean,
we're seeing big companies scoop up small mobile app companies
for billions of dollars because it's a big deal. So
if the Internet of Things takes a route similar to
the way smartphones and mobile technology and apps have, then
it's definitely gonna become something pervasive and hopefully more useful
(35:14):
than problematic. But it's also possible that the first few
implementations of this kind of technology could fall flat, that
they just don't work the way they were anticipated to.
And if it's if it's a big enough failure, it
may mean that we don't see this Internet of things
truly emerge because companies may shy away from it. Yeah. Well,
(35:36):
I mean, like like I was saying earlier, I mean,
there are some things that are already there. We're already
in the world. The thing is, there's I think it's
going to end up being a situation where consumer demand
drives a lot of things like the washer and dryer.
That situation where you know, the washer wood communicated, the dryer, Hey,
expect a load of permanent press it's coming. Um, you know,
(35:57):
that may not necessarily take off. You know, if it's
a five option and people go, I don't I'm not
going to spend it on that. Now, having an email
sent to you to tell you, hey, it's time to
change the clothes over sticking in the in the dryer. Um,
now that would be useful. So I think it's people
are gonna say why I want that? But I don't.
I mean, why would I want this? It may also
be one of those things where a lot of these
(36:18):
features end up getting built into all models. Eventually, like
it filters down so it no longer becomes like a
premium model of a particular appliance. It just becomes a
standard feature that you find across all models of that appliance.
And uh and in that case, um, you might end
up slowly adopting it, but uh, there are other times
(36:40):
where you might see companies just abandoned it. Another good
example of this is like three D television. You know,
there's there are a lot of television sets out there
that have three D built into them, but they're not
necessarily um marketed as three D TVs. Well, that that
might be what we see in the future with these
internet connected appliances, that it's just one of the features
(37:02):
of the appliance and it's not the selling feature, and
that it's not necessarily priced higher because of it. Um,
it's just one of the many things that comes with
that particular appliance. And the other thing that we'll have
to have is some sort of universal standard of communication
for this to truly work, or you're going to see
third party companies pop up and their specialty is creating
(37:26):
some sort of communication hub where different protocols can actually
work together with one another, at least on a superficial level. Uh.
And so my point there is that if manufacturers don't
start looking into ways where their technologies can talk to
other companies technologies, a third party is going to find
(37:47):
a way to make it happen, and then they're gonna
just explode. And that wraps up another classic episode of
tech stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed it. This is
what I was talking about if you listened a few
weeks ago, I mentioned that there were going to be
some upcoming classic epis zodes that would be a little
amusing to listen to in light of the years that
have passed. That's the challenging thing about picking classic episodes
(38:09):
of a technology podcast. Things change so quickly. But then
I thought, you know what, it's also an opportunity to
kind of reflect back on what are thinking was like
a few years ago and see how things have developed
differently than the way we anticipated, or sometimes how we
managed to actually hit upon how things are going to evolve.
(38:30):
I think we miss more frequently than we hit. There's
just too much that's unpredictable out there, but it's still
interesting to go back there. If you guys have any
suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, send me a message.
The address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
or pop on over to our website that's tech stuff
podcast dot com, where you'll find links to the social media,
you'll find all the archived podcasts. You'll find a link
(38:53):
to our online store. Check all that out and I'll
talk to you again really soon for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works
dot com.
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