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).
Interesting!!
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