The Trojan Horse of Today is Sitting Right There In Your Living Room

The Internet of Things is a huge step forward in the notable prowess of human achievement in the ever-widening cyber world as we know it today. Not only does it connect you to everything around, but it also connects your house to the world outside. From your toaster in the kitchen, to the lamp beside your sofa, to the drapes in your bedroom, everything’s connected. And you, the renowned emperor of this network, control all that happens from that little screen hiding in your pocket. But what if, you were not alone? What if, there was someone watching every single step you take, every single move you make, every single toast you scrape butter over, every single time you open your eyes, every single TV show you watch, and literally every single activity of your life? And don’t get scared, that’s not even the most unfortunate part of this story of mine. Coz I don’t even know why I put in that “what if” right there.

To start, let’s trace back to the origins: Why did someone ever think of inventing the Internet of Things? What need in society was that someone trying to address? The slightest of a concept of connected and smart devices was primarily discussed as early as 1982, through a modified Coke vending machine at Carnegie University, earning the title of the “first” step towards the IoT turning into a reality. However, the concept of the Internet of Things became a common household name not until 1999, when Kevin Ashton founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT, and spread the word about this groundbreaking new technology of his. “If all objects and people in daily life were equipped with identifiers, computers could manage and inventory them,” is what Ashton always viewed the sole purpose of the IoT as. He invented the Internet of Things as a mere tagging system, more than anything else. But unfortunately, this “groundbreaking” technology has turned into much more than just a harmless tagging system, and now has the complete potential of truly breaking the ground on which our privacy stands today.

Bloodthirsty multi-national tech companies today all have their feet wet with the expanding ocean formed by the IoT. Each one of them markets it as a means of becoming more connected with your environment, while in fact, this just makes you more isolated from society. These companies (including the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon) are placing us into a remote little bubble of our own, and we ought to burst that bubble as soon as possible. They are carefully monitoring every second of our lives, and I believe that if we just blatantly follow these money-starving capitalist cults, there would hardly be any difference left between our fellow robots and the human race. Remember the movie Wall-E? The movie filled with laid-back fat people sitting in front of their screens and buzzing around on their private loungers in space? Let me tell you this: If we don’t act now and try to make a change in our current technologically-dependent lifestyle, the futuristic dream of Wall-E isn’t very far from becoming a reality.

Tragically, we have allowed these “connected” devices to sneak into our daily lifestyles. Tech giants promised us with a revolutionary new technology for our homes (the wooden horse), but the horrific reality of the Internet of Things (the army) has actually come into play. And if we don’t commence the Trojan War right away, these hidden soldiers may brutally murder us all, before we even get the chance to glance up from the highly important activity of setting the color hues of the lights in our living room through the iSolating screens of our iPhones.