Is the Internet of Things Real?

It’s increasingly difficult to imagine a world without cell phones or a future without our objects connected to the internet.  Today cars, smart home devices, factories, and cities are using IoT technology, and experts predict that the trend will continue into the future.

According to TDengine, the Internet of Things leverages the internet to connect electronic devices that people use every day.  These items are embedded with sensors and software to each other.  The technology allows your smart devices to send, receive, communicate and interpret information and data from connected devices in real timee.

Here is how the Internet of Things will transform the world.

Technologies behind the Development of IoT Systems

Many tech domains are strongly linked to IoT functionality.  The combination of IoT and other digital technologies shows exponential growth in the market.  These technologies are:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML): AI helps manage complicated IoT systems with multiple parameters and factors requiring highly efficient and rapid response and decision-making unavailable in humans.  Simulations and ML methods are used to train AI systems, thus helping them work much better than rigid algorithms that human programmers create.  Further, AI offers creative and well-informed decisions and actions based on previous experiences and mathematical modeling in situations beyond predicted, algorithm-based actions.

Big Data: The technology is a set of various applications and methods.  The technology organizes, manages, and uses enormous data.  This includes high-level operations such as sharing and data visualization.  IoT generates considerable information from many standalone data points such as sensors, devices, etc.  It would be almost impossible to store, analyze and operate this magnitude of data.  However, Big Data management platforms mine, process, and investigate the data and generate valuable insights and findings.  The information helps to optimize and enhance IoT-enabled business processes.

Cloud computing: Technology is made up of multiple interrelated services and is employed by IoT solutions to process massive data generated in the course of operation.  Like IoT, cloud computing depends on an allocated network of devices.  The technology helps to transfer, store, manage, protect and analyze large data streams without deploying expensive in-house/on-site hardware infrastructure.

Benefits of Internet of Things

The practical uses of the Internet of Things are endless because of its rapid growth.  Further, its phenomenal adoption shows that technology has profound advantages.

Here are some of the benefits of IoT.

Connectivity

In the 1990s, a mobile phone was just a phone for receiving calls and sending text messages.  You couldn’t take pictures, listen to music, watch your favorite movie, enjoy TV shows, or access the internet with it.  However, today you can do all these in a single device because IoT provides connectivity to devices and people all over the world.

Convenience

IoT technology has simplified personal, and business lives.  For instance, people no longer walk to the bank to deposit or withdraw money.  They no longer buy envelopes and stamps to pay bills.  You can access government agencies online, and libraries for books, music, and video have been replaced with eBooks and streaming services.

Further, you can earn an advanced degree, learn a language and buy groceries without leaving home.  Even some healthcare services are available virtually, thanks to technology.  TeleHealth eliminates the need to visit a healthcare facility for a prescription or checkup because of IoT.

Efficiency

Enhanced connectivity usually saves people energy, money, and time.  Thanks to this technology, activities that took hours some years back take seconds to complete.  During the post-Covid-19 pandemic, people work from home, which saves them money on gas, commuting time, parking, lunch, grooming, and other expenses related to work.

Advanced communication tools allow workers to communicate from anywhere, and business meetings are now conducted virtually.  Thus technology has done away with physical offices, reducing business trips, physical files, and much more.

Environment

One of IoT’s promises is to protect the environment and make life more sustainable.  It has achieved that through smart technology that helps people monitor natural resources, usage of energy, and water.

Further, IoT has doubled efficiency in the manufacturing industry, reduced waste, and monitors water and air pollution.  Advanced technology helps stop deforestation, protect endangered species, track bee populations, and more.

Fitness and Wellness

Wearable technology has increased the availability and popularity of smarter wearable devices.  Today, you don’t need to go to the hospital to check your body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate because you can use a fitness tracker and watch to do that.

Medically implanted devices (IMDs) use IoT capabilities to defibrillate heart arrhythmias, regulate pacemakers, stimulate the brain, and pump insulin.

Personalization

Businesses provide you products and services based on the website you visit or web searches that you do.  This is because your data is mined using technology and sold to companies to help create a personalized web experience.

Further, data about the type of products and services you purchase online, their costs, and their quality is used to determine your income bracket and tastes.  Ecommerce sites create a consumer profile using your information such as music and movie streaming service providers, fitness and dating sites memberships, medical services, and vacation destinations searches you do on the web.

The sites you visit online influence the options that come first during your next visit.  Brands profile you and personalize your shopping journey based on how you use the internet.

The Downside of IoT

Data mining

Getting your data in order to personalize your consumer journey is an invasion of your privacy.  Personal privacy is becoming a challenge to safeguard in this connected world.  The constitution of many countries protects this right, but data mining has become very profitable for businesses.  Its usage has few advantages to you because of the personalized web experience.

Employer Oversight

Some employers use IoT to monitor remote workers and sometimes shackle them to their computers.  They use certain apps to monitor the website they visit and every keystroke they make.

The excessive overreach has caused employees to miss working in the office where they were not monitored like they’re today.  During the good old days in the office, they could dawdle in the break room or take a walk without the boss following them wherever they went.

Surveillance

As mentioned above, data mining pilfer consumer data, thus invading personal life.  Also, smart devices are able to hear, see, and read your actions and communication.  This data can be used in various ways that can even expose you to fraudsters.

IoT Applications for the Real World

Electronic devices are part of people’s lives at home and work.  They are important because they make life more efficient, easier, and more secure.  For instance, today, you can integrate many things in the house, including an HVAC system, lighting, nanny cam, and security system.

Intranet, data collection, cybersecurity, remote conferencing, virtual assistants, supply chain tracking, and more are workplace processes enhanced by applications of IoT technology.  Therefore, the use of IoT applications will continue to grow and evolve in the coming decades

However, as many people get connected to the internet, security risks such as invasion of privacy and data breaches continue to grow.  Security lags behind innovation give cybercriminals ample time to quickly learn how to exploit software flaws in order to victimize users.

The rapid IoT development quickly renders smart technology and devices obsolete, which affects the entire system.  So there is a need for frequent updates and innovation.

IoT Technology Trends in 2022

The IoT future is full of opportunities.  The following are impactful IoT technology trends in the upcoming years.

Digital Twin

This is a virtual model developed using IoT sensors to simulate and reflect a real object.  To achieve this, experts furnish the object under consideration with various control devices and sensors to help monitor its crucial performance metrics.

Further, data is generated and sent to the IoT system software to create a digital twin.  The technology can also be used to run simulations for parameters such as wind power, temperature, speed, etc.  Some of the industrial hardware that you can study include a bridge, wind turbine, skyscraper, jet engine, and much more.

5G

This is an emerging IoT technology set to shape 2022.  The new telecommunication standard promises high bandwidth, heightened wireless data transmissions speed, and enhanced signal quality which is set to revolutionize IoT capabilities.  Some of the expected benefits of 5G technology includes:

• Lower latency
• Larger network coverage
• Faster data exchange between networking hardware components and/or devices

Blockchain

This is the latest IoT technology trend geared towards bringing better data protection and security methods to IoT devices and networks.  Blockchain technology ensures tamper-resistant data records and the transactions are verified to mitigate against security breaches and prevent disputes in the IoT systems.

The concept behind combining blockchain and IoT is to reduce the impact of authority and centralized nodes as well as allow more autonomy.  Because of that, hackers are not able to compromise the security of the entire system.