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IOT




IOT stands for the Internet Of Things. This is an expanded view of the internet that doesn’t just connect computers or even phones. Never mind smart phones, now you can have smart houses, smart cars, and smart traffic lights. And it includes things like artificial intelligence and remote sensing. On the one hand it is kind of cool. It’s the stuff of science fiction. It is the world of George Jetson. Vending machine companies can get automated alerts that machines need restocking or their drinks aren’t being kept cold enough. Implanted medical devices can report the patient’s or the device’s condition. Industrial systems, factories and power plants can be monitored and controlled remotely. You can tell your house to turn the lights on and preheat the oven before you get home. Farmers can monitor temperature humidity, and soil moisture. With the advent of more cameras hooked into the system, police, fire, and ambulance people can see what is going on before they arrive on scene. These can be good things. But then . . .

I have to say that I don’t think we are ready for the Internet Of Things. Yes, I grew up in the pre-internet days, so I might just be viewed as a grumbling old fogey (OMG I made a George Jetson reference above. That’s really telling my age). But I do have some reasons why I don’t think we are ready. It becomes painfully obvious that we are far from being able to prevent hackers from breaking into places they shouldn’t be (If we will ever be able to prevent that). If banks and insurance companies, with all their vast resources, can get hacked, then how is anybody safe. Banks in particular, you would think, would have an insanely high motivation to do whatever it takes to keep from being hacked. Other big companies have been hacked: Adobe and Yahoo. If anybody should know how not to get hacked, you would think would be tech savvy Adobe and Yahoo, but Adobe suffered maybe the worst data breach ever (so far) that exposed user information from maybe 150 million customers. Equifax is the one that really gets me. Equifax maintains sensitive credit data for . . . well, just about everybody. ‘Whatever it takes’ wasn’t enough. I personally thought after the data breach, Equifax should be banned, prohibited from ever doing business again. But this just goes to show you how hard it is to keep hackers out. It is even more difficult when a whole nation state decides to hack you. Cyber warfare is a very real thing. Do you really want your power grid controlled over the internet if we get into a scrape with Russia, China, or North Korea?

And then there is privacy. With more and more cameras everywhere, do we really want the state to be able to access all those cameras to be able to see what you are doing whenever you step out of the house? And when you are in the house . . . shh. (I have to say this very quietly or Alexa will hear me). You have to be careful what you say.

Legislators have written some rules, but do you really trust politicians to understand this stuff? Does anybody? We have already gone partway down this road where there is no turning back, but before we go any farther, maybe we should wait until we can really make it secure, safe, and protect privacy. Science fiction gives us many cautionary tales about how this can all go wrong, and while it is true that it’s just fiction, you had best not forget Murphy’s Law.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon and other online sources).

Link to Star Liner

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