What if I could move with “just one click”

According to Cisco Systems, the amount of Internet-connected things will reach 50 billion by 2020. In 2008 the amount was just under seven billion and equal to the number of people on earth.

In a few days I’m moving from a small apartment to a house. Thus I have recently realized how many things I actually own. There are at least a few thousand “objects”. Of these thousand; only around 10–20 items are currently connected to the Internet.

I am not able to move them by myself (at least not in an efficient manner) so I sent some enquiries to moving companies . They asked me how many cubic meters I needed to move. I had no idea!

I have since spent aprox. 20 hours getting some sort of overview of my apartment’s inventory, but I still don’t have a desired level of control. Since IoT currently is a buzzword, this tiresome process got me thinking..

What if everything I owned were smart objects, connected to the Internet?

What if all physical objects I purchased had its on unique “identity” that was automatically connected to me or my family when I paid for it??

What if I could move with “just one click”?

What if I could access my family’s inventory list online. Send it to moving companies and let them calculate the exact cubic meters needed. They are the experts, not me!

What if each smart object had a unique digital identity that was used when selling. As part of moving I would happily let some of my old stuff go. It would probably be a lot easier for potential buyers to know if any of my used stuff would fit their need, if only they could get temporary access to the specs from the stuff’s digital identity.

What if a online service also knew where all my stuff was placed. In the process of moving I might lose a few of my things. Thus, it would be great if I could access my inventory list from my smartphone and check the last known location for what I was missing. It would be even better if the service could tell me that of the, lets say, 2000 items I wanted to move, only 1993 arrived at the desired destination and gave me a notification.

There are probably a lot of negative aspects of this, but it would without doubt make my moving process easier.