Re: Not surprised, but...
Wow. For what I would expect to be a technical crowd, there are a lot of people here that are hostile to what is clearly (to me anyhow) something useful and inevitable regardless of how many are in denial.
At one, point, even though we had the largest private network in Canada connecting 150,000 employees, our network architecture committee thought that there would not be a need for more than 56K lines and that LANs and associated servers and printers were 'a solution looking for a problem'.
I am pretty sure that some people, never gave up their horses long after cars were a done deal.
The argument from 'my imagination is limited' is a weak one.
Pointing out that there are few suitable roads to drive upon did not stop automobiles from spreading like wildfire in North America.
A networked community of smart devices that take care of one another beats all sorts of disconnected dumb devices, at least in the long run.
Our current network, by design, makes things all but impossible to secure. However, that is not intrinsic to networking as such. We have a dreadful design.
If they are serious, I am not sure what the naysayers hope to accomplish. If there are problems to a growing IoT (there are), then we should be focusing on the problems with an eye to fixing them, not attempting to assemble a case for scrapping the IoT. Anything is possible, but the odds of the IoT going away seem vanishingly small to me. If nothing else, evolution will eventually finish off the laggards.
A properly designed IoT would allow us to catch predators in real time with virtually no compromise of privacy and no chance of dragnet surveillance. Homes would be safer and cheaper. Cars would be cheaper and safer.
Coordinating activities among devices requires they be able to communicate state somehow and be appropriately responsive to legitimate requests to change state.
We have a lot of work to do to properly harness the IoT and make certain that the very real dangers it poses are contained. Even if there is a finite chance it can be stopped, the very real chance that it cannot be stopped requires us to act now, while we can, to make sure that whatever rolls out is reasonably under our control.
The 'IoT' terminology may be irritating to some, but it is an apt name for a converging network of peering (pun intended) devices.
In March of 2012 I read an article in Forbes where a pundit was sagely explaining how "My internet guru just sent me the arithmetic that shows without any doubt that Facebook can’t be worth $75 billion in market cap– much less $100 billion. At that crazy valuation, it might be the short of 2012."
I posted a comment and a blog entry disagreeing. "if I could purchase the whole shooting match and had the $75 billion I would put it down in a heartbeat. Your Internet guru sent you arithmetic. Sometimes, it *is* just a simple matter of arithmetic. Sadly, this is not one of those times. This is a question of mathematics."
What drives facebook is the mathematics of group forming networks. The same math governs a converging network of connected devices. Its value grows enormously as it accumulates more nodes.
"if someone is coming to you with ... arithmetic ... they have no idea what they are talking about. The value ... is in the network of relationships ... and the value of such a network grows, not with the number of [nodes] N or even some power like N squared or N^10. It grows at the rate of 2^N:
Not ….. N = 0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 04 – 05 – … 50 …
Not . N^2 = 0 – 1 – 4 – 9 – 16 – 25 – … 2,500 …
But . 2^N = 1 – 2 – 4 – 8 – 16 – 32 – … 1,125,899,906,842,624 …
My prediction for facebook was a valuation of $100B in 2014 growing to $1T in 2016. Seems a bit agressive, but so far they are just about exactly on track.
The value of the IoT will grow along similar lines as facebook. Before it becomes too valuable and is locked up by the weasels attempting to gain control of the Internet we would all be well served if the people at least capable of understanding it actually tried to understand it rather than fighting a battle that history tells us they will lose.
Half the arguments against IoT are arguments against something else. The other half would probably apply to just about any tech we have already passed through, certainly to networks, but likely even to electricity. Here's a few:
"The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it... Knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient." -- Dr. Alfred Velpeau (1839), French surgeon
"Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean." -- Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859), Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London.
"There is a young madman proposing to light the streets of London—with what do you suppose—with smoke!" -- Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) [On a proposal to light cities with gaslight.]
"The Kölonische Zeitung [Köln, Germany, 28 March 1819] listed six grave reasons against street lighting, including these: ... It will be easier for people to be in the streets at night, afflicting them with colds... Morality deteriorates through street lighting.. [which keeps the weak from sinning]...
"When the Paris Exhibition closes electric light will close with it and no more be heard of." -- Erasmus Wilson (1878) Professor at Oxford University
"They will never try to steal the phonograph because it has no `commercial value.'" -- Thomas Edison (1847-1931). (He later revised that opinion.)
"This `telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a practical form of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -- Western Union internal memo, 1878
"What use could this company make of an electrical toy?" -- Western Union president William Orton, responding to an offer from Alexander Graham Bell to sell his telephone company to Western Union for $100,000.
"Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value." -- Editorial in the Boston Post (1865)
"Radio has no future." -- Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), British mathematician and physicist, ca. 1897.
"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming." -- Lee DeForest, 1926 (American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube.)
"[Television] won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." -- Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century-Fox, 1946.