‘The Internet of things’ to connect everyday objects wirelessly: Wired.com’s Hansen

OTTAWA—Connectivity is tipping toward an “Internet of things” where everyday objects connect to each other through wireless networks, exchanging tremendous amounts of data, Evan Hansen, editor-in-chief of Wired.com, said in a speech in Ottawa Thursday morning. “There’s a new technology wave underway that is connecting ordinary objects to the Internet and to each other, tracking usage, gathering reams of new data and allowing us to analyze the world in new, powerful and surprising ways,” Hansen said during a keynote speech hosted by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI). Hansen said individuals, researchers and corporations are increasingly connecting objects to networks to receive data. He said researchers from the University of Waterloo’s Critical Media Lab Project have attached electronic data tags to dairy cows at a farm outside of Woodstock, Ont. The tags communicate with sensors that keep track of how much milk each cow produces, how much food they eat, and when they produce the most milk. “The project tracks a mountain of data that can be used to analyze a herd’s milk production and help farmers become more efficient,” Hansen said. The constant flow of information on each cow is also posted automatically to Twitter accounts created for each animal. The project is called “Teat Tweet.” Ron Broglio, an assistant professor of English at Arizona State University, served as part of the Critical Media Lab Project as a visiting professor, and said in an interview that he saw the experiment as a social art project. “What it does is it makes us realize that there’s a thickness to social space and it includes things that we interact with every day but really don’t notice because they’re not human,” Broglio said. “So with the cows, it’s the question of, ‘Wow, milk really has a complex system of operators involved with it.’” Hansen also referred to Jason Garland, a man who modified his doorbell so that every time it rings he gets a text message on his phone. His doorbell also automatically updates his Twitter profile. Hansen said Garland’s idea could be taken a step further, allowing homeowners to start a video chat with people who ring their doorbells, or even open their front door remotely with their cell phones. But privacy advocates say the “Internet of things” can open up individuals to privacy and security threats. “There’s a concern that people will find ways to gain unauthorized access to the information that is being shared between all these different items and that information can be used to profile individuals for criminal or commercial purposes,” Teresa Scassa, Canada research chair in information law at the University of Ottawa, told The Wire Report. Scassa said the technology could result in more targeted advertising and, on a more sinister side, help criminals steal people’s identities or even find ripe targets for a robbery. But there are precautions manufacturers can put in place to protect consumers, Scassa said. One such solution, studied by European Union data protection commissioners, is to create an off switch for any chip transmitting data. “If you bought a carton of milk and you didn’t want it talking to your fridge, you could deactivate it,” Scassa said. She said that some individuals would be more comfortable making information publicly available than others because the technology could offer enough advantages to dispel privacy concerns. “I think people are revealing themselves in ways that were not possible even five or 10 years ago,” Hansen said in an interview following his presentation. “There’s the possibility of me broadcasting my physical location everywhere I go with a cellphone in my pocket.” Hansen said American company Inrix is an example of a company that has entered the market for the “Internet of things.” “In just three years, Inrix has become one of the top providers of real-time traffic data,” Hansen said. “They serve two million drivers a day with real-time traffic information and they cover 250,000 miles of roads in the U.S.” Inrix collects GPS information from vehicles, free iPhone and Android applications, and road sensors to map real-time traffic information. The company makes its traffic information available to the public and syndicates its data to government agencies and other companies. Hansen said the company’s data can be used for more than just knowing how to avoid heavy traffic. “Last Christmas, Inrix was approached by a big hedge fund to help predict retail sales before official market reports were available,” he said. Broglio said managing the huge amounts of data provided by networked objects will be the next step to advance the technology in a practical way. “Google has been the search engine to manage massive elements of the Internet, but how do we manage all these other things that are sending us little feeds of information?” he said. Hansen pointed to IBM’s prediction last week that there will be one trillion Internet-connected objects by next year. He said better algorithms and improved statistical analysis will be the keys to making sense of the information. But the Internet of things has not yet progressed as fast as some expected. “I worked on a report on RFID back in 2005, and at that time this was going to be the next wave of things and everybody was waiting for RFID chips to replace UPC bar codes on products,” Scassa said. “That hasn’t happened. At the pace at which technology moves, five years without that having happened is actually quite significant.” But Scassa added that it may just be a matter of time before “the Internet of things” becomes a presence in our daily lives. jmigneault@thewirereport.ca

‘The Internet of things’ to connect everyday objects wirelessly: Wired.com’s Hansen

News | June 24, 2010

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