t of signaling to computers—implanted chips for control will be just coming along in the 2025 timeframe (evolving in part from better prosthetic controllers), so I expect wearables, more than implantables, to be part of life by 2025.”
By 2023, tech journalists will be writing countless stories predicting Apple’s first iBrainchip, in other words.
9. All this stuff may break. Often.
Warning: the Internet of Things won’t always be the Internet of Smoothly-Working Things…
“I warned in my 2002 book Smart Mobs that a new kind of animism (first voiced by Mark Pesce) might arise: what child will be able to know that a doorknob that recognizes their face doesn’t also know many other things?” said author Howard Rheingold. “We will live in a world where many things won’t work, and nobody will know how to fix them.”
He was backed up by Relationship Economy eXpedition (REX) founder Jerry Michalski. “The Internet of Things (IoT) is too complex. It will break, over and over… Most of the devices exposed on the Internet will be vulnerable. They will also be prone to unintended consequences: they will do things nobody designed for beforehand, most of which will be undesirable,” he said.
“We aren’t evolved enough as a species or society to create apps and services that are useful to humanity in the Internet of Things. We’ll try to create efficiencies but be thwarted by nature’s complexity.”
10. Don’t forget about the people whose Things aren’t connected
We should think beyond the developed western world when considering the impact of the Internet of Things, pointed out some respondents.
“The Internet of Things will add to the comfort of people living in developed countries by 2025. It will also have a measurable impact in utilities markets like energy and water. Unfortunately, it might not help people in developing countries with developmental issues, mainly because of the tendency in many developing countries to focus on the short term and not on the long term,” said Miguel Alcaine, International Telecommunication Union area representative for Central America.
University librarian K.G. Schneider pointed out that even within countries like the US, there will be IoT-haves and have-nots. “Right now, Google Glass follows the pattern of other technology adoptions, where what I see are a handful of first-world white men touting their shiny new toys,” they said.
“Just as students today are burdened if they don’t have home Internet—and at the university where I work, that is true of some of our commuter students, much as people might find that hard to believe—there will be an expectation that successful living as a human will require being equipped with pricey accoutrements… Reflecting on this makes me concerned that as the digital divide widens, people left behind will be increasingly invisible and increasingly seen as less than full humans.”