Yeah I ran across some scaremongers on Twitter 6 months ago who were going on about vaccines (??) And 5G. I had and still have no clue about that.
As a real aside, networking everything does definitely have upsides and downsides.
Upsides: seamless monitoring, remote control via api, integration across a house/car/phone, remote presence (never worry that door was open, or coffee pot is on, or garage door up).
Downsides: DRM at every level, unupdated devices, non-service things are now shorehorned into a service model, you no longer own your possessions, hacking, pay for a plan per device?
There's also spectrum discussions with 10-100x devices chattering. That's going to raise noise floors even higher.
-----------------------
Relevant edit of where I see IoT going towards:
“The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”
“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.
“I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”
Networking things makes sense when remote interaction is useful.
There is very little you can do with a toaster, microwave, or coffee machine while you are not physically present. You can't send toast, coffee, or leftovers over a network. The 'internet of things' isn't useful in and of itself. There has to first be a practical use-case that justifies it.
I haven't had to worry about the coffee pot being on for decades. My $20 coffee pot has a positive temperature coefficient heating element, thermal fuse, and automatic shutoff.
> There has to first be a practical use-case that justifies it.
The use case is additional revenue streams for appliance makers from selling surveillance derived data. Every smart tv is a revenue stream for the manufacturer. That's why you can't buy dumb tvs anymore.
Soon your coffee maker, your toothbrush, your car, your refrigerator, and everything else that plugs in or has a battery will be "smart" in the same way.
Here's the Vizio exec explaining why they would have to charge a premium for "dumb" tvs:
That works works out for TVs because of a few specific things:
1. The consumer wants to hook their TV up to the internet to get content
2. TVs ads have a well established market of buyers who will pay for that data
3. TVs are expensive and consumers often buy primarily on price
By comparison, there is no market for the data from my coffee pot, and little to no incentive for a consumer to choose a model that collects data over one that doesn't.
> 1. The consumer wants to hook their TV up to the internet to get content
As the cost of 5G iot chips fall it won't matter what the consumer wants.
> 2. TVs ads have a well established market of buyers who will pay for that data
The data collected from Smart TVs is much more than ads. They track and report everything you watch, including dvds and blurays, with media fingerprinting techniques.
> By comparison, there is no market for the data from my coffee pot
Oh but there will be. Soon some data scientist at your health insurer will notice that people who drink more than 3.5 cups of Folgers a day are 5% more likely to suffer heatstroke or whatever. Then they can adjust premiums and deny claims more effectively. Not allowed to use this information due to regulations? Apply parallel construction and use it to focus limited investigation resources.
I really hope you're right and this doesn't happen.
> As the cost of 5G iot chips fall it won't matter what the consumer wants.
If the consumer doesn't want that connectivity as a feature, you'll need to find a buyer for the data who is willing to subsidize >= 100% of the price of the additional hardware and service to have a viable product. Alternative data from other sources is probably still going to be a lot cheaper for most things... because a lot of competing data sources have way less overhead, approaching zero in some cases.
> The data collected from Smart TVs is much more than ads. They track and report everything you watch, including dvds and blurays, with media fingerprinting techniques.
I was referring to the purchasers of the data, not the subject of the data.
> Soon some data scientist at your health insurer will notice that people who drink more than 3.5 cups of Folgers a day are 5% more likely to suffer heatstroke or whatever. Then they can adjust premiums and deny claims more effectively.
If they wanted to do this, they could have done it any time over the past 20+ years ago by purchasing transaction data. But insurers have already found better ways to collect even better quality data: Just ask for it directly and offer a discount.
Playing devil's advocate, but I can see how people would appreciate a network connected coffee maker. My wife likes to stay in bed and scroll through her newsfeeds in the morning. If she could start the coffee maker from her phone, it would probably get her out of bed a lot faster.
Some people like to use their Cuisinart Grind & Brew instead of an alarm clock. The grinder will wake you up at the programmed time, and if you get up, you are rewarded with freshly ground coffee.
You can get a pretty dumb coffee maker that has a delayed brew setting. You'd have to put the grounds and water in anyway, so the extra effort is pressing a couple buttons on the machine right after you do that, rather than a couple buttons on your phone in the morning.
Having it made at a specific time is a totally different dynamic than having it made on demand with a press of a button. We don't use alarm clocks, so our wakeup times are different every day.
But regardless, if the coffee made itself at 8am sharp, I would feel pressure to get out of bed immediately, ruining the chillness of the morning. I want to be able to lounge around, scroll the feeds, and then tap the button to make the coffee when Im feeling somewhat ready to make the step out of bed, but need a bit of extra motivation.
Well of course not but if you're an enthusiast you'll probably spend more for one that grinds, too. Or not use a machine, so the whole issue of brew-by-wire is moot. Point is this is a pretty common feature even on cheap machines, with no Internet connectivity required, and the effort required to use it is about the same.
While this sounds absolutely lovely on paper, here's the thing: I do not trust the free market to deliver on that. What will happen is just a bunch of silos where things sorta work together as long as you stick to a single vendor, but half of the things are garbage, as there's no point in making them good when the users are already captive due to buying into the one expensive thing that's best-in-class.
As a real aside, networking everything does definitely have upsides and downsides.
Upsides: seamless monitoring, remote control via api, integration across a house/car/phone, remote presence (never worry that door was open, or coffee pot is on, or garage door up).
Downsides: DRM at every level, unupdated devices, non-service things are now shorehorned into a service model, you no longer own your possessions, hacking, pay for a plan per device?
There's also spectrum discussions with 10-100x devices chattering. That's going to raise noise floors even higher.
-----------------------
Relevant edit of where I see IoT going towards:
“The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”
“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.
“I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”
--- Phllip K Dick, "Ubik".