Why is the Internet of Small Things can be Actually Huge?

What can your computer actually do? It can play music, show videos and run games. With your computer, you can shop online, bank online and communicate with almost anyone on the planet. Imagine that your computer has the fastest processor on earth. And yet, your computer cannot brew coffee! That is why we think that the Internet of things would be huge.

Internet Growth

Who started Internet? Nobody and everybody. When you connect your computer, the Internet grows. In fact Internet originated as a military backup communication system. Fearing a potential attack from the Soviet Union on nation's telephone systems, the US showed interest in developing ARPANET. In 1969, the ARPANET connected two computers: one in UCLA and another one in Stanford. At the end of the year, the number of computers connected: four! The ARPANET evolved into today's Internet with about 3 billion users.

Why is Your Computer not Very Good at Brewing Coffee?

That is because, your computer is designed to be more like a generalist not as a specialist. Think about your biology teacher doing heart surgery! Scary, right? When scientists designed computer, they built a processor that can do mathematical operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. With these operations, you can do pretty much all scientific calculations. Unfortunately, however, an instruction to brew coffee was not added. What an oversight! At least for now, I will have to stick with my coffee maker.

Does that Mean the Life is Boring?

No. There is hope. After the Internet was born, soon the community realized that the mathematical operations can be turned into something useful for the general public. The friendly user interfaces, online forums, chat spaces, blogs and everything else evolved. Voilà! With the birth of social media, now some people spend majority of their lives online!

Still That Doesn't Brew My Coffee!

Yes, that is the point. Someone can do some research and come up with the basic operations for brewing good coffee. Such operations may include heat the element, sense temperature, set a start time, control the water flow, pre-heat carafe, start grinding coffee beans, grinding speed, etc. Once you build a coffee maker that support these instructions, you can then write programs to brew coffee. What if you don't like your coffee? Change the program instead of changing the coffee maker. Someone can come up with an intelligence program to make the coffee maker more adaptable and learn from the experience.

Then you can hookup your coffee maker to the Internet. If the filter is to be replaced, you get the warning on your smart phone. You can control your coffee maker from your phone and keep your brewing programs automatically updated. Your car can hint the coffee maker that you are heading home. And the aroma of the hot coffee invites you home.

Doctor's Visit

You suddenly get a message from your doctor. You need to see her right away. The reason: your watch smart sensed some irregularity with your heart rate. And the good doctor didn't like your blood pressure either. As you leave your home to the doctor's office, your thermostat shuts off the air conditioning -- go green. Your doctor suggests that you drink less coffee.

The Internet of smart specialized devices can make your life really interesting. Buckle your seat belts!! As always, like to hear from you. Use the contact link.