When you think about your home appliances, they serve a single purpose. They toast your bread, keep your food warm/cold, wash and dry your clothes, or make your coffee for you. But what if I told you that they are capable of doing more than their basic function?
With Internet of Things (or IoT) our average appliances and devices are getting smarter and smarted by the day. Adding intelligence and connectivity to these mundane devices, allows the appliances to understand what they need, when they need it, and how to get it all by themselves with no intervention from humans.
What once looked like science fiction is now a reality. No more making grocery lists, dragging trips to the store, and carrying bags of goods from the shop. For e.g. the washing machine can now not only measure when it’s running low on detergent but also order it for you through your credit card account when it starts running low. A couple of days later, you get the detergent delivered to your front doorstep. Similarly, your car monitors health of each individual part and generates an advance warning of any possible failures. The concept is to be extended to the biological realm as well. Special chips will be embedded in all prosthetics and natural organs which can be used to monitor and control your biological activities and remind you of coming checkups and vaccination dates.
With powerful new age processors and shrinking board size, we can now create intelligent sensors that interact with the physical world and make intelligent decisions after computing the data and connecting with other devices through the internet in real time.
Thus, as the digital and physical world comes together, we can look at the internet of things as a collective intelligent organism with a mind of its own. However, for this Web of Things to live up to its possibilities, it needs to be centered on the user and what they want. Not connecting because we can but connecting because we should.
