Are We REALLY Ready for an IoTized Planet?
IoT as another offshoot of the 4th industrial revolution has gathered so much traction and so much attention that it reflects on the market scenes. There are currently more than 5 billion devices connected to the internet as you read this and by 2020, according to Gartner, we expect a 500% increase in that figure.
The potential of a world with connected devices and so much convenience and simplicity, so much information and analysis and so much more than our minds can actually grasp right now is beginning to take shape and the rate at which the IoT industry is growing and expanding does not suggest that it would plateau anytime soon. There are more companies restructuring their products so they are IoTized than there are companies not considering the option. Yet, some basic questions remain unanswered.
Maybe a story would help put this situation in a better light, funny how the notion that nothing is new under the planet rears out its head here. The year is 1583 and the story is that of a man called William Lee. He had built the first machine that mechanized the textile industry which not-coincidentally led to the First Industrial Revolution. There is a need to understand how the textile industry worked in those days to really appreciate Lee’s revolutionary machine as it took up to four days to knit a stocking. Lee’s machine worked 12 times faster.
In his words, he said, “The idea of a machine and the creating of it ate into my heart and brain”. By 1589, he had his knitting machine ready and proceeded to the Queen for a patent who replied him with the following words. “Thou aimest high, Master Lee. Consider thou what the invention could do to my poor subjects. It would assuredly bring to them ruin by depriving them of employment, thus making them beggars”.
Lee was denied a patent, he went to James I in France and was denied yet again after which his death in 1614 (in distress ) is the next known information we have of him.
There is no doubt that IoT would change our world, the way we do business, the way we interact and the way our society is built, structured and secured. There is also no doubt that 2016 is a thousand miles different from 1583. Nevertheless, the question we MUST answer is simple. Are We Ready for The Creative Disruption that is to follow, assuming that we are aware of how much of that disruption is going to happen?
Bill McCabe’s article on IoT Security states the obvious. “ People have come to expect that their security cannot always be maintained online. But the difference with IoT is that we’re not simply talking about passwords, emails and social media accounts. Instead, we’re talking about access to the garage door, the front door, or even knowing whether or not somebody is home.” And Bill stops at that point to continue on providing examples, but that doesn’t even capture the issue at hand.
Nigeria recently made it 8000% more difficult to fly a drone in the country than it is to fly one in the US and as I will soon delve into, a discussion about the policies and the rate at which government can catch up with this innovation has not begun to take shape. However, the reason cited was because of the government’s inability to cope with a situation where terrorists decide to fly a drone. Dumb yeah? Sure! But Technology used for making our lives better can also be used for making our lives a nightmare. With so much information available to those who can access such, there is no extreme we can get to in thinking of the so many negative possibilities that can happen.
The very scary part is consumers are even less aware of these risks and are next to illiterate about mitigating these risks and fashioning out how to protect themselves. Seven out of ten IoT devices surveyed by Fortify Security Software Unit for example had failed to encrypt IoT data during transfer via wireless networks and six of those ten had not even downloaded firmware from encrypted sources. The risks are evident and there is NEED much more than the urge to evolve into that IoTized world to sufficiently provide for security measures before we start to face the consequences. This point I believe need not be over-flogged.
A much more important issue is how government plays catch up with this innovation and by government I do not mean the US Government or the Brazilian government. I mean government as an institution. Lee’s innovation was by every means a success until the government stood in its way and even in developed countries where the government has been shoved out of people’s way to prosperity or a kind of life, Government still plays an important role in society so much so that it cannot afford to play catch up but be one step or two steps ahead so we don’t have to sacrifice a lot in learning what to do and what not to do before finally catching up.
Are there new legislations being proposed to cater for the new world we are headed? Is the WHO already thinking about the increased level of inequality that is to exponentially boom in years to come especially globally, Are there people thinking about the plenty of jobs that are to be lost to IoT and how to ensure that unlike Queen Elizabeth’s subjects, they don’t go wandering and causing political instability? Are there serious implications on existing laws by the influx of 30 billion IoTized devices by 2020? Will we still be talking about Privacy in years to come or will government now have access to people’s lives by clicking a button?
The past 200 years has seen so much development and so much innovation that the weirdest of us does not even have an idea what the next 200 years will look like and it doesn’t ever look like we have even started. But so that at different levels we can fit into the world we are creating for ourselves and the unborn generation, we need to have answers to these questions and hopefully wouldn’t have to sacrifice as much as we had to in the first industrial revolution.
I am also hoping, howbeit, pessimistically that Africa leapfrogs into this future.
I hope I have not started a controversy? Your comments are welcome.
