Internet of Philosophy: Municipal

Intro to a Three Parter

Today, I'm going to start a three piece run on three different areas/levels/implementation spaces for the Internet of Things: Municipal, Commercial/Industrial, and Consumer.  For each, I plan on discussing the basics, pros and cons, and a potential guiding philosophy (hence the title) that may help those that build systems within each of these spaces.

I'm doing this because the Internet of Things is too all-encompassing a term.  Too often I read articles that appear to be about smart homes but are really about enterprise implementations.  As I filter my IoT reading for smart homes, it got me wondering how many articles with enterprise or government sounding titles were really about consumer level IoT.  There are no clear cut boundaries and, in the long term, there should not be as everything gets integrated.  But for the nonce (TIL of brit-slang nonce), these systems aren't connected or really working together in any way.

This separation is due mostly to funding.  Is the taxpayer, the stock holders or the private citizen paying for it?  Occasionally, it's all three as is the case with the slow, grinding move towards a smart power grid.  Usually, though, we pay for IoT systems as a member of only one of those groups.

The Internet of Retail

What You Think It Will Look Like

When people talk about the Internet of Things, there are two examples that come to most peoples' minds: big corporate logistics and smart homes.  Those seem obvious.  The first is all about how large corporations keep track of their inventory, automate their supply chain, and cut costs around their energy use (and keep track of their employees via key cards and GPS).  There are easy benefits for all of us to understand: if these large corporations can cut costs, then the products or services that they provide will also be cheaper.  The smart home is similar: easy benefits in convenience, energy savings and security.

However, there is another place where the IoT is taking off: retail.  Here's an example of where they will want to go:

(Minority Report, courtesy of DreamworksSKG and 20th Century Fox)

Minority Report was released in 2002 and we're still a long way off from having that level of (intrusive) personalized, targeted advertising.  But we're getting closer.

Rant: There Shall Be Only One

(Image courtesy of Logitech via Mashable)

Windmill Tilting Badge, Level 1

I am working on my Curmudgeon Merit badges and yelling at a multi-national corporation for stupidity is one that I have not completed until last week.  Then Logitech pissed me off.

The Data of Things

"What do you write about?"

I've been trying to explain this blog to a few people and have been having trouble coming up with a decent elevator pitch.  "The Internet of Things is..." and that's where I get stuck.  In my second post of all time, I tried defining it and ended up with "whatever I say it is."  Which is fine, but maybe not that helpful, even for me.  Today, I want to take another crack at it.

The formal definition if you type "What is the Internet of Things?" into Google is:

"...a proposed development of the Internet in which everyday objects have network connectivity, allowing them to send and receive data..."

Grocery Disruption

Last week, the most interesting development in the Internet of Things and the automation of our lives was not how Microsoft plans to let you control your home through their HoloLens or the coming alliance between The Thread Group and The Open Connectivity Foundation.  It's not even the fear of Russians hacking voting booths.  Instead, it is that FarmBot opened for Pre-orders.

(Source: www.Farmbot.io)

The Internet of Money

The Internet of Things is a definite revolution in its own right, but it is also part of something bigger: the Internet of Money.  The first real "Big Data" collection was/is financial: stock trades, money markets, consumer debt.  It all got stored on computers.  That led to things like Flash Trading, Mortgage Backed Securities and, more recently, BitCoin and its siblings.  Some of it bad, some of it good, mostly just changes brought about by the increasing access and automation of data without any moral compass beyond "it'll make things easier (and there are fees to earn.)"

From Funnel to Cycle

The Internet of Things fits in here because it starts to expand automation from data automation to thing automation.  Which is why we're all excited about it.  But for the companies that are investing in this buzzword, it goes beyond making it easy for you to set your thermostat or have the lights come on when you open the door.  All of that is the hook.  Ultimately, they want to automate your purchase decisions.

This has already been massively accelerated due to the internet.  If you look at the pre-internet consumer decision journey, it is a funnel:

Source: Business2Community.com

With the rise of the Internet and, more importantly, recommendation engines (based on individual buying data = big data), this turned from a funnel into a cycle:

Source: wearesocial.com

Recommendation engines operating on the "If you like this, then you'll like it again and also things similar to it" mean that we consumers no longer have to start at the top of the funnel for each and every purchase, but can work within a trust circle (that inner, smaller loop.)  But we still have to make the purchase every time.  We have to actually click on "Add to Cart."

From Cycle to Out-Of-The-Loop

The big change to the Internet of Money brought on by the Internet of Things is that now, the cycle only needs to happen once.  Instead of us making that lower re-loop when we need to replace something, the purchase has already been made and we no longer have to be part of the loop.

This has been going on in industry for a while.  "Just in Time"  inventory (keeping only enough parts in stock to last a re-stocking cycle) is a similar process, but had purchasing agents involved.  The newer system that everyone from retailers to manufacturers to restaurants have been working on for the past two decades is to connect their inventory management systems together, allowing purchase orders to be automatically sent out when inventory reaches a critical state.

Here's Where You Come In (Or Not)

What smart home manufacturers want is to create a similar inventory management system for your home.  If your home system knows when you are low on milk (through your smart refrigerator,) then it can order more and have it sent to your home.  It gets charged to your registered account (plus shipping and tax and a fee) and you can cross off a thing you no longer have to worry about.  In theory, the fee is less than the gas that you would use to go get that same milk.

All of this assumes that you have a smart appliance, that you take the time to teach it your tastes in various brands, that it won't start recommending other brands (or simply ordering them) because of some kick back between the various milk cartels, that you have consistent power and a solid internet connection.  Then, after all of that is set up, you won't have to worry about buying milk ever again.

What a world.

The Final Plea - Why I want to be VP

I've written a fair amount on what I would do as Vice President under Hillary and the Machine and some of my qualifications, but I'm not sure that I've adequately explained why I want the job.