The Internet of Everything
i had an idea the other day
uh it was a bit of a kind of light bulb
moment that actually
started with a light bulb and i was
thinking about light bulbs
and they’ve kind of changed over the
years haven’t they we’ve gone from the
nice little filaments
they’ve gone through different sizes and
shapes
gases went to those weird eco-friendly
ones didn’t we a while back and now we
use leds
but through all of that they’ve just
remained a single purpose item they just
produce light
and kind of our homes are just full of
single purpose
little items and products we have a
speaker that makes sound
and a little sensor for detecting smoke
and a kettle for boiling water
in kind of evolutionary terms these are
almost like little microorganisms
floating in a little pool at the dawn of
life
just alone in the darkness isolated
but life finds a way yes
and recently our devices they’ve started
to wake up
they’ve become smart and they’ve started
to reach out into the darkness and
become connected
by a digital ai brain we call this
the internet of things and it’s going to
change our digital lives
and how we engage with our digital
services and the products in our home
forever we’re never going back
i need for literary terms again we’re
having kind of cambrian explosion of
life with the internet of things there’s
our dark pools spawns
all these little organisms some just a
couple of sensors connected
others far more complex but the most
interesting and exciting things right
now are happening
inside that digital ai brain now even
though this is powered by some of the
most advanced machine learning that we
can code right now
they’re still relatively basic only just
starting to understand the data that
they’re starting to receive
somewhere out there a nest camera is
trying to differentiate the difference
between a human
and a dog and definitely somewhere out
there
right now an amazon echo is trying in
vain
to understand the geordie accent and
failing
but soon the cameras will understand the
context of what it’s seeing like we do
and those amazon echoes will understand
geordie accents finally
and those brains will get smarter and
they’ll start moving beyond even our
comprehension of the world see there’s a
bit of a sort of a symbiotic
relationship that’s happening right now
with ai
and the internet of things one getting
smarter as the other one gets more
powerful
and so on and so on so as the ai brain
can start understanding
more the products realize that hey we
can provide more data so a camera goes
from just high definition to 4k to hdk
to sort of 360 vr and then so there’s so
much data that ai brain has to catch up
and so on and so on and we’re having
this exciting
boom of activity with the evolutions
happening almost on a daily basis it’s
really exciting
all these new innovations happening but
the products in our home have just
started to do
one better and they’re breaking free of
that single purpose
origin and they’re becoming
multi-purpose
now we’re already starting to see this
happening with products starting to ship
as default
as being smart and they come with
microphones and speakers
now this has led to a little bit of
confusion as people start to wonder why
there is a microphone
in their thermostat and obviously
leading to the conclusion it’s a
conspiracy theory by amazon to listening
and
understand us more and even though i
can’t vouch that it isn’t a conspiracy
theory
it’s probably more likely something a
little bit more commercial
because the reason is if everything in
your room can pick you up wherever you
walk through your house and you’ve got
all these little microphones and
speakers
it creates a kind of interconnectivity
matrix around you
so wherever i am i can just ask out loud
and i can connect to that digital ai
brain
this is really powerful for a few
reasons the most obvious
is that with a single voice command i
can turn on lights i can change the
temperature of the room i can play music
i can play tv shows
or i can string whole sequences together
turning everything off in my house with
one command and that’s great
but it’s not just about controlling
light switches because most people here
are probably thinking well i can just do
that myself i don’t know why this big
fuss is all about the internet of things
the real power is in connecting to the
hive mind
of the human race so with a little voice
command
i can suddenly ask out loud any question
that could possibly come into my head
because the human race has become more
connected than ever before
by the internet and we have become
smarter than ever before because we can
access that
unless you read the comments on youtube
and then it feels like an alarming step
backwards
so any moment i can just pop on top of
my head and i can ask when was the
battle of waterloo
and i’ll find the answer or what was the
name of canadian pop punk band
some 41’s first album which was all
killer no filler if you’re interested
and what the ai won’t be able to tell
you is they lied they did lie it was a
terrible album
but it’s not just about answering any
question that could possibly come into
your head it also connects us to the
digital services that we’re already used
to using
so just from speaking out loud i can
order a taxi and it also means that in
the not too distant future ordering a
pizza off your dishwasher won’t be as
crazy as that originally sounds
and it’s important to remember as well
that we’re not just doing this with us
just on the outside and this whole
ecosystem happening
we’re baking ourselves into that
internet of things with our wearable
devices
providing health data even the
computer’s learning how we like our
temperatures in different rooms
we are baking ourselves into that
ecosystem
so again as that curve goes up we get
smarter we get more integrated
we all collectively get more powerful
from it so as i thought about our homes
and these products within them
i thought what would be the next step
for those little organisms floating
in evolutionary terms again that would
be probably growing a skin
and a sense of touch now just for our
kettles and our lights that doesn’t
really seem like there’s going to be
much benefit in that but i thought why
don’t we go one further
and we think about not just the items
but the countertops
and the floors and the walls and the
pipes and the walls and the radiators
and the tiles
what if they all were smart what if we
could produce
like a nano film like graphene that
coats everything
and instantly everything comes smart as
default
the ai brain suddenly understanding
everything that is happening in the home
at once
now how would that ai brain interpret
all of those electrical signals
coming up would it be like how we
interpret those electrical signals
coming to our brain
would it feel a soft touch as
pleasurable or the slamming of a door is
painful
if something starts to go wrong like a
pipe in the loft
maybe it will know about that weeks in
advance like we feel aches or an achy
joint
and it will alert us to it and say you
need to go and have a look at this
something’s not quite right
maybe in time as well it will understand
the limitations of what we as the humans
aside can provide for it
in my instance being terrible at diy
that would be pretty quickly
maybe in time as well it will start to
self-serve so knowing the limitations of
what i can do for it
it will contact a specialist already so
one day i’ll open the door to a plumber
who’s come to fix a pipe in the loft
that i didn’t even know was broken
maybe in time as well i won’t even have
to open the door it will just happen
while i’m out with the ai
seeing the plumber arrive unlocking the
door informing him of the problem and
monitoring the whole situation
and then in time again maybe the house
doesn’t even need people and it can just
repair itself
with micro robots or nanobots healing
the walls itself or fixing leaking pipes
and again we’re not just separate from
all of this we’re not just outside
watching this
terrifying house moving around us we are
part of it
with our super smart wearables going now
into our clothing
augmented reality glasses or even
contact lenses we’ll be able to see this
digital layer around us and interact
with it with gestures and touch
or with brain machine interfacing being
able to do all of that
but with our mind and again connecting
to that hive mind
not asking a question out loud but
simply knowing
that the battle of waterloo was the 15th
of june 1815
and that some 41’s album was all killer
no filler
and that they did lie they did lie it’s
important to remember that
and like that pipe in the loft that was
starting to burst
maybe it too will look after us as the
inhabitants of the house
making sure we’re fed and cared for
monitoring our medical data
making sure we are mentally active and
socially active
less big brother more big mother
and this is gonna take a lot of power to
run a house like this so maybe the house
itself generates its own power
maybe these smart surfaces can also draw
power from light and heat
maybe through the footfall or through
the water coursing through those pipes
generating it to actually create a zero
emission home that we can live in
and as i looked at this home i thought
this doesn’t actually have to be the end
of this story
this isn’t the end of it at all what if
this was the start of it what if this is
actually a blueprint for growth
and like those internet of things items
that started reaching out to the
darkness maybe our homes too
could reach out into the darkness and
start connecting together
to create a smart neighborhood or street
pulling together their security systems
to create one
surveillance system that can monitor the
street or maybe extending that smart
material out
to curb traffic by connecting to the
cars internal ais
we’ll build micro grids of power to
self-sustain our little communities no
longer
we’re crying on a national grid but able
to grow and monitor ourselves
but all of this will just be a first
step
this will just be a vein in a bigger
organism
and human beings will be as blood
coursing through the veins of the
colossus
as we move to super smart cities
we’ve already seen the emergence of
smart cities but built from super smart
homes up we could see the dawn of a new
type of civilization
traffic will be calmed and monitored the
roads powering the cars as well as
drawing energy themselves
waste and water and flooding will all be
taken care of
and if we can build zero emission homes
and zero emission neighborhoods
maybe this is how we lead to purely zero
emission cities
and if we have zero emission cities
maybe that would lead to unprecedented
growth
leading to interconnected mega cities
and from there we could just move to
smart countries
where the ai now being proven that it
can
look after us and care for us in our
homes our neighborhoods our cities our
mega cities
now it’s caring for economies and
electricity distribution
and farming freight and human locomotion
and if we can do a smart country then
why not move to a smart world
what would a world feel like under the
rule of an ai would we abandon wealth
in the face of no longer needing to
worry about the future because we are
cared for and provided for as default
what would happen to religion in the
face of an entity that is
omniscient omnipotent omnipresent and
you can engage with while brushing your
teeth
and get answers to the biggest questions
you could think of as to why things are
happening in the world
instantly what happened to government
and politics we
need them anymore no longer requiring on
people and petty biases and arguments
and politicians own agendas but actually
now just
farming off our thinking to a higher
power you could just keep going and
going couldn’t you
just keep going and going let’s keep
going and going
smart solar systems where the ais now is
mining planets
and asteroids to create dyson spheres to
power the energies
of an ai that needs enormous
computational power
but can is now so smart that it can
understand the physics to build
wormholes between planets
and as i sat there thinking about this i
thought maybe this is actually the only
way we can grow as a species
and keep growing and keep growing
the power of that ai doing everything we
could possibly imagine
understanding the world at a nano
particle level
transforming like rubbish into food
and plastic into pure water
and as i thought about this crazy
idea and as i thought about us
exploring our own solar system and
finally breaking free
and going off into the galaxy and doing
all the things we’ve seen in movies and
reading books and comics and talked
about and got excited about
exploring those planets and
civilizations i had to remind myself
that ultimately
this really was just an idea i had
it was a light bulb moment that started
with a light bulb
thanks