What is the Internet of Things? And why should you care? | Benson Hougland | TEDxTemecula

[Music] so my name is Benson and I'm a geek not a not a geek in the traditional sense I certainly wouldn't call me an Uber geek more of a more of a closet one but a geek none less and here's why I love technology it fascinates me it's a big big part of my life it's it's driven my career and frankly it's fun and that's why I'm here today geekdom and Tech technology is poised for a huge leap forward and its name the internet of things so what is this internet of things and why should

you care well here the internet has been around for a while but it's been mostly the product of people so all the data and and images and recordings and Games books and commerce and all of that was created by people for people and about people see the internet is one of the most important and transformative Technologies ever invented I happen to know a few people who couldn't live without it all kidding aside the internet is like a digital fabric that's woven into the lives of all of us in one way or another the internet of

people changed the world well there's a new internet emerging and it's poised to change the world again you see this new internet is not just about connecting people it's about connecting things and so it's named The Internet of Things okay so connecting things to the internet big deal right well it kind of is and here's why because things can start to share their experiences with other things whoa wait what how's that work right well it works like this you take things and then you add the ability to sense and communicate and touch and control and

there you get an opportunity for things to interact and collaborate with other things so think of it like this um we as human beings we interact and contribute and collaborate with other people in our own environment through our five senses we have seeing and and smelling and and and touch and taste and hearing right well imagine things with the ability to sense and to touch and then add the ability to communicate and that's where the internet of people and The Internet of Things intersect so what are some examples of these things well let's start here

how about your smartphone you wouldn't believe it how many senses your smartphone has it knows where you are it knows if you're moving it knows how you're holding it it knows how much light's in the room it knows how close it is to your face it knows what you're saying to it and it even has an eye so it can see its surroundings oh and it also has ability to to communicate in a wireless network okay so that's probably an obvious example how about this one my bracelet I'm wearing it up here right now it

tracks my steps it tracks my activity it even knows how well I've slept and it can communicate on a network okay all of us probably have one of these in our homes maybe a version of one of these it's a thermostat but this thermostat does way more than just know the temperature in the room it knows whether I'm in the room or not and it learns and tracks my home and away patterns to ensure my comfort and save energy and it communicates on a network so I can control it from afar so these light bulbs

with these light bulbs I can create all kinds of moods with brightness and and and light and and dimming and so on but because they communicate on a network they know how to listen so I can tell them or other things can tell them to turn on off or blink this garage door opener opens the largest door in my home and because it communicates on a network every time it does it lets me know did it open or close or I can open or close it from anywhere now this thing is the scale that I

can step on and automatically records my weight and puts it in a fitness app but this thing is not it's broken it's the data is never right so this thing is something that fits on my dog's collar it's called a whistle and it tracks my dog's activities same way that I do now there's a lot of things that were manufactured and built before the internet of things and the good news is we have tools and systems that allow you to add sensing and Communications capabilities to existing things the device on the left is called an

Arduino board and it's a pretty common in hobbyist circles and prototype applications the device on the right is called a programmable automation controller and this device also gives things the ability to sense and communicate in fact fact I use this device in my own home so what are some real world examples of these things in the real world well allow me to take you on a pictorial of my typical day or my typical morning in The Internet of Things there I am lying blissfully asleep and uh you can see I have my armband on and

the beauty of that is it's sensing my sleep cycles and it knows the most opportune moment to gracefully wake me up by gently vibrating and blinking a light well that when that happens my bracelet sends a message to other things in my home and pretty soon a chain of events starts to occur where my things are talking to other things for example my thermostat goes up to 80 as my whole house fans start up and draw all the cool morning air into my home which preols my home allows me to not turn on my air

conditioning for later in the afternoon saves me a boatload of electricity then my coffee maker starts up and my bed side lamp Fades to Bright so then I'm kind of curious how did I sleep last night so I roll over and grab my phone and the good news is I uh exceeded my goal then I like to get up in the morning and take my dog for a walk so I put his whistle uh thing on his collar I hook him up to the leash and off we go Healthy dog is a happy dog and

the fresh air does us both a lot of good so while I'm walking I get an email and it says that my spa just turned on you see in my day job we build Internet of Things products for industrial applications so sometimes my home is used as a demonstration so I go over into my app for my spa and I ensure that the uh Spa was turned back off and then while I'm here I thought you know I wonder how much water went on my lawn this morning you see my sprinkler thing communicates with the

local water districts thing that senses a bunch of parameters and tells my sprinkler system how much water to apply to my lawn well that's really important today with our current drought conditions so it's certainly conserving water and I save uh I save on my water bill as well and then while I'm here why not check out my wine aging in a barrel at my friend's Sellar 45 miles away all within my app so I get back from my walk I I eat my breakfast and I scan my breakfast eggs right into my food diary everything

is good there kind of wrapping things up it's time to uh hug my kids and I have hug sensors in my shirt that measures how many hug like I'm kidding I I'm that's not true uh I don't have hug sensors in my shirt but the internet of things does include smart textiles and clothing so be looking out for that and as I pull away to work I get a message on my phone that my garage door successfully closed behind me so I could go on and on about my day's events and how it correlates and

interacts with the internet of things but I think you get my point and uh of course I did warn you I was a little bit geeky so so who cares that's probably what you're asking yourselves right now who cares about all this well let's start here big business cares and they care to the tune of billions of dollars they're making huge Investments you could say they're betting the farm on the internet of things so even General Electric just came out with a two-minute commercial be running on network television called the boy that beeps you got

to check it out it's very cool and IBM has been in this space for a long time although under the banner of smarter Planet but there's a couple of recent developments that I think are worth noting first is Samsung they make the handsets among other things and they just purchased a company called smart things for $200 million this company didn't even exist two and a half years ago and in other news Google purchased a company called nest and one of the largest Acquisitions in The Internet of Things space for $3.2 billion this is a company

makes thermostats and smoke dete tors so obviously these companies think there's something big on the horizon they're willing to put a lot of money on the line of course this week we also heard uh from Apple they just announced two new phones and they also announced a watch and they also have a couple software development kits so uh both health kit and home kit so I expect a a slew of apps and and uh products that will Target home and wellness how big is the internet of things well it's been said that the that the

internet things was born at the point in time where there were more things on the internet than people and that occurred around 2008 today there's over 10 billion devices things on the Internet or about 1.5 for every person on the planet that's expected to balloon to 50 billion by 2020 and that's going to of course usher in dramatic billions of dollars of economic growth in utilities and and automotive and electronics and Healthcare I get it I get it big business Tech Giants Geeks like me We Care right we're in it we're thrilled by this this

is the next big thing but why should you care well we all want to live better lives and the the technologies that are inherent in the internet of things like the ability to sense communicate acquire data and so on will help us build processes and systems that will deliver Better Health Care through remote Diagnostics and monitoring and and and bring a safer environments with like early morning systems for tsunami or or earthquake and and tex already has a proven track record of providing new levels of comfort for us and certainly convenience in automating everyday tasks

but wisdom what's that about so let's reference the knowledge pyramid we all know that wisdom comes from sensing the world around us and collecting all that raw data and seeing how it comes together with patterns and Trends and that turns into knowledge and of course what we derive from knowledge is wisdom so yes I believe that the internet of things well is the perfect thing to collect a lot of this data turn it into wisdom and move the human race forward here's an example of knowledge to or data to knowledge Google flu you heard of

this this is cool so what what Google has done is they started tracking the location and frequency of Search terms related to the flu flu symptoms flu uh diseases flu treatments and what they found is that there was a pattern that existed between these Search terms and and where flu activity was regionally so they built this website and it's used by Hospital Personnel urgent care centers and medical professionals of all kinds to understand what's occurring because we all know that the early detection of a disease can reduce the effect on a lot of us so

it's it's certainly another case where the internet of things can be the way to aggregate this data and help us all okay so the internet of things kind of Big A lot of people are interested in it looks like there might be some real real world use cases maybe even some great potential but are there challenges are there pitfalls are there blind spots we don't even see yet the answer is yes to all three first it's human nature to resist change or as depicted in this slide who Moved My Cheese syndrome we've seen it time

and again over the course of history you've got uh electricity and Automobiles and airplane travel and the telephone and oh it took years from the point of invention to the point of widespread adoption but it's all part of our normal lives today so I I posit that one of the challenges of The Internet of Things is to overcome this notion or belief that you know what everything's just fine the way it is maybe so but then there's another component a technical side to this and it's that the Internet of Things is way too complex I'd

love to say that I'm a user of the internet of things but in reality I'm an integrator it took me countless hours to put all that stuff together most people are not going to do that in fact it was in 1991 that uh Mark Weiser WR wrote an article for the Scientific American that said the most profound Technologies are those that disappear they weave themselves in the fabric of everyday life until they indistinguishable from it I 100% agree Tech is its most useful when it disappears then no conversation about the Internet of Things is complete

without discussing security and privacy privacy is Paramount hey I don't mind if my my thermostat knows if I'm in the home or not but it better not share that data with anybody else and and data in the aggregate like we saw with the Google flu example that's probably okay as long as no personally identifiable information is shared as well so security is also very very important in other words I think a lot of us in here and certainly I am very comfortable with doing Banking online because I know that my banks have implemented security policies

and technologies that ensure that I have a very secure connection with them can you say the same about my armband or my garage door opener H I don't know maybe not yet it's something I think we all need to work on but what if what if there was some application some some significant boost to our quality of life would that be enough to prompt us to move ahead with the internet of things let's go back to my morning and there I am again lying blissfully asleep or so it seems turns out the sensors in my

armband sense something's very wrong my heart rate is going up my breathing is is become erratic and instead of this time gently waking me it vibrates aggressively to get my attention and as I I roll over I I'm grabbing my chest and I'm I'm like what's going on so I reach over to my phone and I pull it up and sure enough there's a message it says I I'm having high blood pressure and my breathing is erratic and and and it suggests that I take a two aspirin right away and and then goes on to

say it says uh all of my Vital Signs have been recorded and electronically transmitted to my medical provider so back at the back at the hospital the doctor's already evaluating my data and in his professional opinion I need to get in the hospital right away so he electronically dispatches EMT directly to my home including pertinent data about my current medical situation so they know how to take care of me and I even get a notice or a message from the EMT that they're about to arrive I'm whisking to the hospital and I'm I'm put under

care and observation the good news is later that morning the doctor comes and says you're going to be fine you were suffering a heart attack and we avoided any major damage because you got the treatment you needed in just the nick of time so now is the Internet of Things worth it maybe all because things can talk to other things or what we call the internet of things thank thank [Applause] [Music] you