Kelli Anderson

This article was taken from the July 2013issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to readWired's articles in print before they'reposted online, and get your hands on loadsof additional content by subscribing online

(https://www.circules.com/subscribe/wired-uk/60606).

To talk of the new coolness, we must first address thatwhich is not cool -- and the fridge, metaphorically atleast, is never cool. Let me explain. Every newtechnology that wired sees, every new device orservice or app, comes with a use-case -- a reason thatwe need that new thing, or a suggestion of how it willbe used. Some of these appear so often that they arelike old friends: "Imagine you are in a new town andneed to find a recommendation for a restaurant", or"You're out mountain-biking but need to keep on topof your stocks and shares", both of which havespawned apps every couple of years since the 90s.

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There are two, though, that make us twitch. "You'rewalking by a shop, the GPS tells us, and we know youlike that brand, as social media tells us, so we push anadvert to your phone to lure you inside" appears withscreen-smashing regularity.

But the worst by far is the Internet Fridge. Imagine afridge, a big American-style one, pristine but for thescreen on the front to access the web. You could lookat recipes! You could leave notes for the kids! Youcould read the news, or maybe even order yourgroceries! A clever one might propose a scanner forthe owner to swipe things in and out, so that it mightone day automatically order more milk when you needit -- though not yet.

Krisztian Flautner, VP of R&D, ARM: “The IoT reminds me of the web in the 90s, when manykiller apps existed in embryonic form. Intellisense.io simplifies collecting data from connectedtech, and Neul deploys a cost-effective wireless network for IoT devices.”

These concepts never catch on, perhaps simplybecause they always cost more than just buying atablet and an ordinary fridge, and applying one to theother with Velcro. The prime Internet Fridge of recentyears -- actually quite a nice vintage -- came fromSamsung. Its RF4289, unveiled at the ConsumerElectronics Show in January 2011(http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/12/samsung-wifi-enabled-rf4289-fridge-cools-eats-and-tweets-we-go/), cost $3,699 (£2,400). An awful lot for theprivilege of looking up recipes on Epicurious andbeing able to access your Google calendar. Indeed,that's more than twice as expensive as, and infinitelyless capable than, a Smeg fridge, an iPad mini, andsome Blu-Tack. A luxury item, then -- and not at allopen or hackable. Which, as we'll see in the rest ofthis special feature, is missing the point somewhat.

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In 2013, the internet of things, the new generation ofinternet-connected devices, isn't embodied inexpensive household appliances with a yuppielifestyle use-case and a limited audience. It's morelikely to be a sensor that costs pennies, made by themillions, and distributed across the city. It could be alamp with a thousand-kilometre cable, a bus thatknows where it is, or a parking meter that talks toyour phone. By strapping a receiving computer to theside of it, the Internet Fridge brings the internet to adevice. By connecting transmitting sensors to thenetwork, the internet of things brings the device to theinternet.

But before we get to the present, and start to discernthe future, let's reference the past, and start with adefinition. The internet of things, the IoT, is, in itsoriginal meaning, the connection of everyday objectsand devices to the internet. In 1999, when the phrasewas first coined, the idea was that once connected,these things could then talk to us, and also to eachother. Household appliances, yes, but also sensors,and vehicles, and books, and clothes, andwristwatches, and devices of all forms. Once it wasrealised that all one needed to make a sensor's outputavailable to anyone on the planet, no matter where itwas, was for it to simply be connected to the internet,then the imagination could run wild. The previouslydifficult bit of getting a sensor in one place to registerin another would be as irrelevant as the location of aweb server is to the person looking at the site itproduces. The sensors and gadgets and so on couldalso be made to be quite tiny. They can be smallbecause the bit that is hard -- the linkage -- is takencare of by the internet. The internet allows for thattricky middle bit to become invisible.

In 1999, however, all that technology was stillexpensive, slow, reliant on dial-up, and not fit forpublic consumption. There was no Wi-Fi, nosmartphones, very little broadband, and storage andprocessing power were limited. Today, though, thishas all changed. Tiny computers have become reallycheap, and while that's been happening, wirelessconnectivity has become ubiquitous, cloud computinghas arrived, and almost everyone has an always-connected data device in their pocket. In short, it'snow really cheap to connect the real world to theinternet.

We're not talking about big banks of sensors orcomplex machinery. Rather, the internet of things is,at heart, made of simple lights, or microphones, or

sensors that cost a few pennies each; of little printersand thermometers, or even just switches or dials orrelays to turn other circuits on and off. Each of thesethings might seem, on their own, a little pointless orniche, such as a light bulb you can dim over Wi-Fi viayour phone (one was launched last year by Insteon),or a weather vane in your back garden that uploadsthe wind speed to the web. But have both, and havethe data that comes off them be open and usable, andyou could have a bedroom that gradually lights itselfto wake you gently -- and if the weather conditions aresuitable for your hobby of sailing, it knows to wakeyou a little earlier. Or a thermostat that asks yourphone where you are, could turn itself up as you getcloser to home. Stepping through the front doorcould trigger dampness sensors in your plant pots,which text you to say they're thirsty. You water themas you wait for your partner to join you -- runninglate, according to the internet-connected trainstalking to the picture frame in the hall.

All of these things are now possible and available. Butas the internet of things becomes more commonplace,it is also, curiously, a disappearing technology. Assoon as something becomes accepted as an advance,and one so complex that it appears magical, it willsuddenly disappear from view. Magical has a habit ofbecoming banal very quickly indeed, and abstractingitself away behind numbers.

Usman Haque, Director, Haque Design + Researchcompanies with socio-cultural impact, such as Asthmapolis,take products and use simple connectivity to buildcommunities. For example, the shared geolocation ofasthma-inhaler usage helps sufferers find potential trouble-spots.”

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Andy Hobsbawm, Cofounder, Evrythng: “We’re fascinated by physical things having a digitalidentity, such as Electric Imp’s tiny web-connected computer, which is embedded into an SDcard, so any product with an SD slot can get online.”

The weather forecast on a phone is a good example.That number, giving you today's weather, is actuallythe result of a constantly chattering network ofsensors on land and at sea, autonomously gossipingabout the state of their neighbourhood with the rest oftheir crowd, before finally whispering out over anetwork of devices, out to space and under the sea, toreach your phone. That number might then meet othernumbers from other networks of sensors, be combinedby algorithms that have consulted your diary, and allcome together in a symphony of co-operation thatcauses your alarm clock to decide to wake you up intime to deal with snow delays on the train line and getyou to your appointment on time. An internet ofthousands of things will have quietly collaborated andcome to your aid, and very quickly this remarkabledance will seem to you to be so natural as to beentirely dull.

With this new naturalness the weather examplebecomes quite apt. Sufficiently complex networks ofinternet-connected devices start to act almost as ifthey were natural systems, complete with storms andcalm and sudden darkenings as, say, the signal dropsfor whatever reason. Things on the internet can getsick, too. For desktop computers, catching a virus canbe pretty nasty. You can lose all your stuff, or haveyour secrets shared with the world. For an internet-of-things object, catching a virus can be catastrophic.Flying internet objects, such as drones, have alreadybeen shown to be vulnerable to malicious code. Theremote cockpits that control the US military's Predatordrone fleet were extensively infected with a virus(http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/), albeit a harmless one, late in2011. And last December, at the DroneGames in SanFrancisco, winner James Halliday wrote code thatcould infect not the controls, but the toy drone itself,and then be transmitted from drone to drone in flight,"causing them all to be 'pwned' and run amok".

As systems linking sensor readings with actions takenelsewhere become more commonplace and complex, asmall problem within one system might butterfly intoa very serious one within many others that rely on it.We don't yet know what this complexity will mean,nor what mischief might be possible: confuse aparking meter here; close down a motorway junctionover there.

Quickly, this remarkable dance --the internet of things -- will seemto you to be so natural as to beentirely dull

Carlo Ratti, Director, SENSEable City Laboratory, MIT:“The LG Internet fridge talks to a computer, and the Nestthermostat talks to a mobile phone. Soon all of our objectswill be able to talk to each other and to us. Perhaps,through our objects, we will be able to better understandeach other.”

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A side-effect of writing about the IoT is that you useanthropomorphic verbs with disturbing regularity.Already we've had objects confusing, gossiping,talking and deciding. It seems to be fitting to do this.Each of these technologies brings more subtlety, and,in effect, more humanity with them. A subclass of theinternet of things is the remote affection device, suchas the Good Night Lamp ( Wired 04.13(http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/04/start/turn-your-friends-on)), or the prototype Pillow Talk. Withthe former, pairs of bedside lamps stay in contact overthe internet: someone turning on one lights both ofthem. With the latter, a heart-rate monitor worn as aring sends heartbeat data over the internet to a lightand speaker in a pillow, allowing your lover to fallasleep to a sound of a heart beating in sync with yourown. There's a gentleness and a fluidity to the internetof things that comes from organic inputs, or thesmoother averages of sensors over a wide area.

These fitting reactions to the ebb and flow of life arealso of interest to business. As objects can talk to eachother without human intervention, imagine theamount of chatter that could come from a fully IoT'ddistribution network for, say, a beer. Kegs reportingthemselves almost empty could trigger a new delivery-- but kegs that gave their emptying rate, combinedwith the internet-connected jukebox and the songmetadata available on the web, would allow apublican to see which band sold the most beer, orwhich beats-per-minute shifted the most peanuts. Acustomer paying for drinks with a credit card, whosestatements went to a system that combined it withexercise data coming from a sensor on his belt could,if everyone played nicely, tell our casual drinker howmuch extra exercise they'll need to do tomorrow, andget their shoes to remind them, via an instantmessage, to run that little bit further.

Connected devices to monitor our health are a majorsector for 2013. Ever-smaller, cheaper sensors thatcan connect to the rather powerful general-purposecomputer in your pocket that pretends to be a phone,are starting to offer new possibilities for doctors andpatients alike. As you'll see elsewhere in this feature,previously cumbersome devices such as blood-glucosemonitors can now plug into the bottom of an iPhoneand use the internet to share medical data with notonly your primary physician, but also your ownsystems and your social networks. The whole idea ofthe Quantified Self movement(http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-

Sensors arecheap, and thedecisions theyallow us tomake are sovaluable to us,that we run therisk of believingthat data iswithout bias

10/27/self-hacking) is touse these devices torecord as much dataabout ourselves as wecan, in order to try to findpatterns that matchbehaviour orcircumstance withmedical consequence.The internet of thingsallows this self-monitoring to be done ingroups, with multiplesensors, and with accessto greater analytic powerin the cloud.

It's not just our health -- it's our animals' too. OneDutch company, Sparked (http://www.sparked.nl),has internet-connected sensors that can be implantedinside cows to monitor their vital signs. Anotherdevice, from a technical college in Bern, which iscurrently being tested(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/world/europe/device-sends-message-to-swiss-farmer-when-cow-is-in-heat.html?pagewanted=all) by a Swiss farmer namedChristian Oesch on his 44 Friesian and Jersey cows,will send Herr Oesch a text message whenever itdetects one of the cows is in heat -- apparently a trickything to do by eye -- so he might introduce a bull, orprep the artificial inseminator. An automaticallyopening gate, an autonomous drone taking pictures ofthe act for later record-keeping, a triggered email tothe local vet, and a post to the cow's Twitter streamwould be a simple addition to this system. One almosthopes he provides them.

If we're going to connect every cow's internal organsto the internet (or at least every kitten's), it willrequire an acceleration in the uptake of the latestinternet techologies. There are two problems beforeus. The first is the eternal one: there's never enoughbandwidth. If, for example, every street in your cityhas a bank of sensors giving real-time data onambient sound level, pollen count, and CO2 levels, themobile networks are going to need to grow. The

Jan Holler, Principal researcher, Ericsson Labs: “Imaginereal-world objects can perform tasks for you via the web.Open community efforts, such as the Contiki operatingsystem, combine with cloud services such as xively.com toshare data-feeds. We need to scale this up.”

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second is the hardest. Every device connected to theinternet, from every server to every phone, shouldhave a unique name, called the IP address. Thecurrent system for writing IP addresses is called IPv4and uses four numbers, each from 0 to 255. In thismanner, the IP address for Wired.co.uk(http://www.wired.co.uk) is 54.247.94.130. Thisnumbering system means there are 4.3 billion possibleIP addresses, which is not nearly enough -- even todaywe need to use all manner of technical fixes to getround this -- never mind with the internet of things inten years' time. So a new version is being introduced,called IPv6, which provides for considerably moreaddresses: 34 with 37 zeros after it. This ought to beenough for everyone, and so IPv6 has been rolling outfor the past year.

Technical concerns aside, the full potential of theinternet of things also requires a series of culturalshifts. The upcoming ubiquity of internet-connectedsensors, for example, requires that the data comingfrom these devices is understandable, and open to useby as many people as possible. The way you interfacewith them when you're a programmer again needs tobe open and understandable, and this interfacingneeds to be free to be done without having to askanyone's permission. Imagine a future where privatedevices could have secondary public uses: ATMs willnever make their customers' details public, of course,but the security camera that faces out from most cashmachines could be connected to the internet. If not fora live video feed, then for an automatic count of howmany people had walked by in the past minute. Anetwork of those machines, with the data madeavailable in real time to anyone who wants it, couldproduce anything from pedestrian traffic maps to dataon the economy. Public buses could quietly gather thedata for others to create better maps, and personaldata collected about stress levels could, if broughttogether openly, lead to a greater understanding ofthe effects of place on our mental state. None of thesenew innovations or research could happen without aprior arrangement between all the parts of the puzzle.But if culturally we decide, by default, to make thedata from these devices freely available without priorarrangement, then we have a very good chance ofsomeone finding correlations and relationshipsbetween data and the state we desire to be in.

The second cultural change is deeper, and comes fromthis reliance on, and faith in, data. If we're going tostart to measure many more things because the

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sensors are so cheap, and the decisions they allow usto make are so valuable to us, then we run the risk ofbelieving that data is somehow pure and without bias.This isn't true. Data is invariably wrong, and not for areason you'll have thought of already. Then there isthe choice of what to measure, how, when and whereto -- and how to deal with that data afterwards. Thisdecision is always made by a person or a corporationwhose cultural and social bias will out. A network ofsensors across a city linked to the traffic-light systemcan be programmed to optimise for many things -- it'sup to the human who writes the code to decide ifspeed of commute is equally important for peopleoriginating from different parts of the city, or if trafficshould be hindered to encourage more drivers to takethe train instead. These are social decisions, butenacted through programming rather than politics.

So too for societies that find themselves ever morereliant on specific gadgets -- smartphones, say -- whena good proportion of the population can't afford them,can't get online, or doesn't understand them.Smartphone-connected medical gear, after all, is onlyof use to those with both a smartphone and the will touse it. Inevitably, as the internet stretches itself acrossever more of the physical world, we need to questionthe social implications of these technologies becomingso much part of the modern world that they begin todisappear. Moore's Law, the rule that computingpower for a specific price doubles every 18 months, isthe driving force behind many of these innovations,and it says that with every passing year, everythingwill be much more powerful and plentiful. Today'strivial toy devices, with their whimsical use-cases, arethe core of tomorrow's way of life. At the mostextreme, we must examine all of their effects we canforesee, before we throw ourselves at them forever.And we must gird ourselves against the technologycombinations that no one should everwant. Especially, for everyone's sake, the InternetFridge.

Ben Hammersley wrote about managing your digitalcommunications(http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/08/ideas-bank/lets-talk-about-how-soon-we-can-have-that-chat)in 08.12. He is working on a book on the same subject

Read more about how the internet of things is changingthe worldCity sensors: the internet of things is taking overour cities