The Internet of Everything?
In my hometown, Hangzhou China, it is really hot recently and the temperature is over 30 Celsius degrees. It is time to turn on air conditioning for cooling. However, gone are the days when I need to manually turn on the air-conditioner using a remote controller. Having equipped a Mi Temperature and Humidity Monitor in my room, air conditioning can be turned on and off automatically by configuring a preset temperature in the Mi app. Digital device installed Mi app like smart phone, the Mi Temperature and Humidity Monitor and the air conditioning are linking to each other through a Bluetooth gateway. Users can preset temperatures to close and open the air conditioning in the app, then when the monitor detects that temperature in the room is changed to the preset level, it would control the air conditioning to turn on or turn off. It is an example of the Internet of Things (IoT) affecting our daily lives. But what is the IoT?
There are many defintions of IoT, and two of them from Wikipedia and Techopedia are introduced on a post in this course:
“The Internet of things (IoT) is the extension of Internet connectivity into physical devices and everyday objects. Embedded with electronics, Internet connectivity, and other forms of hardware (such as sensors), these devices can communicate and interact with others over the Internet, and they can be remotely monitored and controlled”
“The IoT is significant because an object that can represent itself digitally becomes something greater than the object by itself. No longer does the object relate just to its user, but it is now connected to surrounding objects and database data. When many objects act in unison, they are known as having “ambient intelligence.”
However, in my understanding, IoT can be explained in short, simply and non-technologically: IoT is taking things and connecting them to the Internet. Although you may not aware, it is the fact that we are benefit a lot from it.
When using mobile map apps like Google Map to find a route, you may find that some crowded roads would be colored into red. What’s more, many routes with the suggestions for chosen would be given by map apps. Seeing this information, we could adjust our route thus saving more time. This is implemented by installing sensors at key points on roads, highways and railways and connecting them to the Internet. Logistics tracking information is also implemented in a similar way by equipping trucks with sensors, so that you can track the transportation along the way, track time, etc.
The Internet of Things has also played an important role in healthcare applications. Many people around the world are unable to enjoy effective health check thus cause health problems. Now, small and powerful wireless solutions that connect through IoT allow health monitoring services to reach patients instead of patients seeking health checking services. Using these solutions, people can safely capture the patient’s health data through a variety of sensors, using complex algorithms to analyze these data, and then share the data with professional medical staff through wireless connection, so that medical staff can give appropriate health advice.
To enhance public safety, cities are adopting real-time crime mapping, gunshot detection, and predictive policing tools by setting sensors, monitors and collecting data to help identify potential hotspots and prevent crimes from happening.
As many companies like IKEA and Xiao MI have their plan to dominate the smart home market, it is easy to see that being smart means in the future more and more things at home would be connected. However, are the more things connected to the Internet, the better?
On October 2016, a hacker found a vulnerability on a specific model of security cameras. Nearly 300,000 Internet of Things (IoT) video recorders started to attack multiple social network websites and brought down Twitter and other high-profile platforms, for almost two hours.
This attack is just an example of what can happen to IoT devices with poor security. There have been countless cases where security has been compromised on devices that are connected to the Internet. It is not only video cameras, but anything with an internet connection, from a refrigerator, smart locks, thermostats, lightbulbs, vehicles, and even smart toys. Using them always poses IoT security challenges and risks to overcome.
Another problem is about privacy. For one aspect, as a user, I would want the Internet to know as much about my house as possible to make me feel a smart home. For another aspect, I would not want the Internet to know too much. The thought of having my house know everything about me is pretty terrifying. For example, I’m not comfortable having my fridge know exactly how much things I’ve eaten in a day. Also, I may be afraid of someone knowing the light level of my room. This can be referred to guess whether I am at home, what I am doing. I believe I’m not the only one with these types of concerns. The typical questions you should ask about privacy include: How much information do people actually want to be collected? Where will the device’s information be stored? How can we allow users to customize the behavior of the device? For instance, most of the location-based application like Uber will offer you the ability to allowing the application to collect the data about your location if you want to in case that the application collect position data you may not want to share with the application.
Reflection
Majored in computer science, I chose this Digital Society course unit because it is closely related to what I am learning. When choosing this course, I was expecting to learn something related to my major in a different way and from different perspectives. And now, nearly at the end of the course, I think it meet my expectation.
In the Internet topic, I learnt the development, the purpose and the dangers of the Internet. I use the Internet everyday but lacking some background knowledge about it. While in my computer science course, it is focusing on introducing the communication protocols and data transmission through the Internet. This topic is useful and interesting to see the develop flow of the Internet through images and videos. The IoT topic gives an introduction of IoT by placing it within its historical context. While in my computer science course, it focuses on the technology behind and the design a IoT system, this topic helps me to learn about IoT through other aspects. The Explore new technology with DigiLab topic is the same. In my normal study, I will learn more about the machine learning algorithms and the math behind algorithms. In this course unit, I focus on experiencing interactive demos implemented using machine learning algorithms that I may be familiar with. It is interesting to see the dull and difficult algorithm could make such interesting applications. This also inspires me to learn deeper about my own major including mathematical course and the machine learning algorithms. Hoping in the future, I could also develop an interesting and useful application like demos I experienced in this course.
Although I really learn a lot from this course unit, I have struggled some time when understanding the content published some weeks like critical analysis and when doing the assessment. The assessment is writing posts which is a format that I didn’t get in touch before this course unit. I did not know how to make the title of a post attractive, how to use the image to better explain what I want to deliver, how to reference resources in a right way, etc. By emailing staffs in the Digital Society and reading the feedback they have given, I gradually learnt how to write a post by referencing in a right format, using the proper image and so on. The most important thing I have learnt is the critical analysis skill. In the second assessment, I could not clearly understand what it means. Thanks to the staffs in this course, I now know more about it. Critical analysis is a skill which is always to think about the positive and negative aspect of things and try to think critically. This is a skill that I would also benefit a lot in the later study time.
