Internet of Things

 

The Internet of Things will soon have us living in a world where everything—even you and your socks—is marked with a constantly broadcasting Bluetooth wireless antenna. The series of articles in Canadian Business is a must-read for everyone.

• Smarter Cities           Connected Cars           Networked bodies

Excerpts from these articles

The electro-sensitive are already living in hell, with wireless everywhere. Now, there will likely be millions—even billions—more mini-antennas in every town, business, workplace, and home. Says Canadian Business: “The close concentration of urban dwellers, combined with plummeting hardware costs and the overlapping layers of wireless data that accompany us—beamed from cell towers, pulsing from Wi-Fi hot spots, radiating from smartphones in our pockets—has made it easier than ever before to track, sort, manage and organize things in a city setting.”

Wireless in every item you own, broadcasting 24/7.  A Bluetooth-enabled square that can be attached to any item—in a wallet, inside a guitar, stuffed inside a sock—the Tile will ring whenever someone uses a smartphone app to “call” it. 

Wristbands that identify exactly who you are may soon be required for access to most modern necessities.   Canadian Business subtitles its article, “Hotels that know you. Shops that welcome you back. The new digital world knows who you are—and what you want.” At recent demonstration in Toronto, a biomedical researcher slipped on a wristband and waved it at a laptop, watching as the computer recognized him and unlocked itself. Then he handed the same wristband to his research partner, who put it on and tried the same thing—but this time, the laptop didn’t respond.

The wrist-worn device, the Nymi, may soon be used to make the wearer instantly recognizable to wireless devices everywhere. It works like an electrocardiogram, measuring the electric signals that come from its wearer’s heartbeat [and disrupt that heartbeat in the electrosensitive] and are as unique a signature as fingerprints. The bracelet can then wirelessly vouch for its owner’s identity for any nearby device that might ask.

The obvious application for a device like this is access: opening physical doors and getting beyond digital passwords. But Karl Martin, co-founder of Bionym, the company that makes the Nymi, has his sights on a bigger goal: “persistent identity”—the idea that the Nymi, or something like it, could make the wearer instantly recognizable to wireless devices everywhere, whether at home or at a coffee shop in London.

Municipalities install wireless everywhere. Santander, Spain exemplifies the new trend. The city is spreading sensors across the urban landscape, transforming formerly insensate objects into little Internet nodes. Sensors on parking spaces, a series of about 60 sensors at the city’s main entry points gauges traffic flows and volumes. Sensors in its parks and gardens measure moisture and rainfall, in a bid to make irrigation as effective as possible. And to assess environmental conditions, the city put 150 detectors for airborne particles and carbon dioxide into taxis and buses.

Santander is a test bed, the kind of flagship demonstrator that is beloved by governments and big technology companies. But the ideas on display there are already starting to spread in more prosaic ways to cities around the world. For decades, urban governments have built information systems that trafficked in huge amounts of data in-house—everything from GIS mapping systems to huge amounts of hoarded traffic stats. Today, those systems are moving off private networks and onto the Internet, where they can be combined and put to use.

RFID Chips
In it June 3, 2014 Gadget Show, the U.K.’s Channel 5 stated that “the ultimate goal will be to have RFID chips fitted directly into our bodies“. (@ 06:25 mark below ). Read more and see the video.

Environment
Sensors in its parks and gardens measure moisture and rainfall, in a bid to make irrigation as effective as possible. And to assess environmental conditions, the city put 150 detectors for airborne particles and carbon dioxide into taxis and buses.

 

 

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