es in essentially the same way we talk to other people. Yes, you will be permanently connected to the network via wearable devices. You will interact with these devices mostly by voice, as you would interact with another person,” said Google’s chief economist Hal Varian.
“Centuries ago, rich people had servants, and in the future, we will all have cyberservants.”
3. Get set to quantify yourself even more
The “quantification of the self” is already a much talked-about concept, particularly around fitness tracking. It looks set to accelerate by 2025, and some of the consequences sound frankly terrifying.
“Every part of our life will be quantifiable, and eternal, and we will answer to the community for our decisions. For example, skipping the gym will have your gym shoes auto tweet (equivalent) to the peer-to-peer health insurance network that will decide to degrade your premiums,” said social media educator Laurel Papworth.
“There is already a machine that can read brain activity, including desire, in front of advertising by near/proximity. I have no doubt that will be placed into the Big Data databases when evaluating hand gestures, body language, and pace for presenting social objects for discussion/purchase/voting.”
4. There are plenty of IoT sceptics
If all this has you reaching for the ragecomment button, remember that the research did manage to find sceptics about the Internet of Things’ likely impact – and indeed about whether that impact will be as big as some think.
“The Internet of Things has been in the red zone of the hypometer for over a decade now. Yes, there will be many niche applications, but it will not be the next big thing, as many pundits predict. If the Internet of Things had any true validity, you would think you would start to see evidence of its presence on early adopter Internet networks,” said green-internet consultant Bill St. Arnaud.
“No, yuck, we don’t need this, and most people aren’t asking for it. I’ve never been quite clear on where the demand is supposedly coming from,” agreed Open Tech Strategies partner Karl Fogel.
“The scarce resource will continue to be human attention. There is a limit to the usefulness of devices that are worn in public but that demand attention because it is often socially and practically unacceptable to give those devices enough attention to make them worth the trouble of configuring and interacting with.”
5. Privacy is a big concern
When you see words like “pernicious” and “prison-like” in a debate, you know that it’s getting heated. Such is the case here.
“The effects will be widespread but pernicious. We might as well inject ourselves into the Internet of Things. By 2025, we will have long ago given up our privacy. The Internet of Things will demand – and we will give willingly – our souls,” said college professor Peter Jacoby.
“As Rivera’s film Sleep Dealer shows, the workplace plugged into the Internet of Things will be more productive and more prison-like (or, to be more accurate, more like an ‘ankle monitor’ of the mind that upgrades scanning not merely to location, but also to observable ‘outputs’ like typing and eye movements),” agreed law professor Frank Pasquale.
“Jonathan Crary’s 24/7 is also an essential guide to this future. It sets the stage for extraordinarily targeted monitoring and manipulation of these individuals. There will be a small class of ‘watchers’ and a much larger class of the experimented upon, the watched. Rules that govern institutional research boards should be applied here, too.”
6. But the Internet of Things could protect our privacy too
It’s not all bad. Smarter, wearable devices could protect our privacy rather than just intrude into it, according to some of the surveyed experts.
“We will wear smart clothes and smart things. The world will also be thick with smart things as well, including products for sale that communicate what they are, what they cost, and much more. Moderating between ourselves and the rest of the world will be systems of manners,” said Doc Searls, from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
“So,