INTERNET OF THING: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
For those of you who aren't acquainted, the Internet of Things (IoT) refers to 'smart' objects – anything from home appliances, medical instrument to car – that can connect to a network to pass and receive data.
PAST
Despite the fact that IoT has been around for many years, with some evidence of it as early as 1832, it would have been unheard by anyone other than high level technology folk until recent years. It was in 1999 that Kevin Ashton, a co-founder of MIT Auto-ID Center, coined the term Internet of Things, naming what they were trying to bring to life: connecting things with things. However, the concept of IoT was first visible as early as the 1980s and 1990s.
- In the early 1980s, a Coca Cola Machine at Carnegie Mellon University was connected by local programmers over the internet. It allowed users to check whether a chilled drink was available in the machine before visiting.
- In 1990, John Romkey invented a toaster that could be turned on and off over the internet.
- In 2011, Gartner included IoT in their list of 'new emerging phenomena'.
- In 2012, tech-based magazines such as Fast Company, Wired, and Forbes started using the word “Internet of Things” more commonly. The theme of the biggest Internet conference LeWeb that year also was IoT.
- In 2013, IDC published a report stating that the IoT market would be an $8.9 trillion market by 2020.
Ever since, this technology has just seen an upward trend and a faster growth than any other technology invented around the same time.
PRESENT
Today, anything and everything can be connected to the internet, right from your phone car, refrigerator, television or even a pacemaker and many more devices. This makes it possible to send, receive and collect information which in turn makes the devices intelligent. Along with homes and offices, IoT is being implemented in hospitals, industries, streets and beyond.
Based on its application, IoT gets several names like the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Machine to Machine (M2M), ubicomp, invasive or pervasive computing.Nowadays, using smart parking, smart door lockers, smart home appliances, bluetooth trackers, kitcher, bike locks etc makes management of the devices easier.
FUTURE
According to Forbes magazine, by 2021, the IoT market will reach $520B, which is double the amount spent in 2017. But the future of IoT is not just about the devices that exist at the edge of the internet. The massive growth of devices will drive change into the overall ecosystem from cloud infrastructure to the means of communication among these devices. One of the largest growing segments in IoT will be in data centres and analytics (It is the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data).
Bernard Marr of Forbes summed it up perfectly when he said: 'A big part of the Internet of Things isn’t so much about smart devices, but about sensors. These tiny innovations can be attached to everything from yogurt cups to the cement in bridges and then record and send data back into the cloud. This will allow businesses to collect more and more specific feedback on how products or equipment are used, when they break, and even what users might want in the future.'
So what does the future of IoT hold? Well, it will continue to grow – we’re still in the early stages of what will be a highly connected world be. Indeed, IoT is proving to be a game-changer, and rightly so.