https://www.wired.com/story/wired-guide-internet-of-things/
What you need to know about the promise (and peril) of networked lightbulbs, ovens, cameras, speakers and, well … everything.
ILLUSTRATION: RADIO
How many engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
Depends on whether or not that lightbulb is connected to Wi-Fi.
Lightbulbs, along with refrigerators, coffee makers, microwave ovens, baby monitors, security cameras, speakers, televisions, and thermostats have, in the past few decades, transformed from ordinary objects into conduits for the future. Embedded with sensors that see, hear, and touch the world around them, they can turn physical information into digital data. Collectively, these devices—and there are billions of them around the world—make up the “internet of things.”
Just about anything with network connectivity belongs to the internet of things, from security cameras and speakers to smart watches and denim jackets. In the “smart home,” these internet-enabled gadgets liberate us from our chores, give us back some of our time, and add a dash of novelty to ordinary experiences. (“Alexa, turn on the disco lights.”) But the internet of things is about more than just using your voice to preheat the oven or using your phone to turn off the lights. The real promise of the internet of things is making our physical surroundings accessible to our digital computers, putting sensors on everything in the world and translating it into a digital format. Internet-connected objects could be the key to unlocking predictions about everything from consumer behavior to climate events, but those same objects could invite hackers into personal spaces and leak intimate data. Depending on who you ask, the growing internet of things either represents the promise of technology—the thing that will reinvent modern life as we know it—or that which will be our technological undoing.
The dream of a sensory computer as the centerpiece of the smart home has occupied the popular imagination for at least half a century. Sci-fi writers like Ray Bradbury and television shows like The Jetsons brought the automated house to life, and inventors began creating prototypes for exhibitions around the world, showing off ideas for self-cleaning homes and furniture that could move itself around for its occupants.
The net benefit of these gizmos was, for the most part, liberation from housework. At the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, Whirlpool created an exhibit called the “Miracle Kitchen”—a futuristic display meant to show what life in capitalist America was like. It included a dishwasher that cleared the table and a proto-Roomba to sweep the floors. “In America, we like to make life easier for women,” Richard Nixon said to Nikita Khrushchev, the President of the Soviet Union, in an apparent jab on the showfloor.
Most of the early smart home inventions used automatic controls, making it possible to turn something or off without lifting a finger. But they didn’t connect to anything else, and their functionality was limited. That would begin to change in 1983 when ARPANET, the earliest version of the internet, adopted the internet protocol suite (also known as TCP/IP). The protocol set standards for how digital data should be transmitted, routed, and received. Essentially, it laid the groundwork for the modern internet.
IoT Through the Years
1990 John Romkey creates the first IoT device: a toaster that he controls with his computer
1999 Kevin Ashton coins the term “internet of things” to describe the eyes and ears of a computer
2000 LG introduces its first connected refrigerator with a $20,000 pricetag
2008 The world’s first IoT conference is held in Zurich, Switzerland
2010 Tony Fadell founds Nest, maker of the smart thermostat
2013 Oxford Dictionary adds the term “internet of things”