The recent “Internet of things” revolution has brought with it great promise but also potentially nightmarish scenarios, as tech executive James VanderMey observed at a conference in Minneapolis on Friday.
VanderMey, a self-confessed nerd who has tricked out his home with all manner of smart gadgets, said he worries about the potential of being “hit by a proverbial bus” or perishing by other means. If that happened, he wonders if his non-tech savvy wife could make sense of their home, with all its passwords and other complexities.
VanderMey, chief innovation officer at Michigan-based Open Systems Technologies, was among the presenters at IoTFuse, an event focused on how Internet features have become embedded in everyday devices and objects. About 500 people attended, and some break-out sessions featured tech demos.
It is estimated that 50 billion such devices and objects — everything from thermostats and garage-door openers to baby monitors and refrigerators — will be Internet-linked by 2020.
For tech enthusiasts and experts, this is hugely exciting — but at times also sobering because of potential security issues and other concerns. In an industry that is so new, possible pitfalls aren’t always apparent. Rapid growth compounds the problem.
WHEN OWNER IS GONE
VanderMey said it only recently dawned on him that he needed to perform a home-tech audit with his wife so she’d be able to cope if he somehow were out of the picture.
VanderMey, who sometimes works out of an office in Minneapolis, wasn’t the only one expressing concerns about the rapidly rising Internet of Things scene.
Amber Case, one of IoTFuse’s keynote speakers, outlined a scenario she called the “dystopian kitchen of the future.”
Smart gizmos in such a kitchen might work just fine for whomever installed them, said Case, a self-described “cyborg anthropologist” and author of “Calm Technology: Designing for Billions of Devices and the Internet of Things.”
But what if the nerd moved? How would the residence’s new owners make sense of it all? This would be like a Family Circus cartoon in which “everything is speaking” and creating a tech cacophony because “everything was written by a different engineer,” Case said.
ANXIETY VS WHIMSY
Often, not enough thought is being given to how such technology is created, she went on. Internet of Things tech should “inform and becalm” while not taking itself too seriously, she said.
Google Glass was a failure in large part because the tech-infused glasses created anxiety, she believes. When Case used to wear her camera-equipped Glass goggles everywhere, she said she was continually, nervously asked, “Are you recording me right now?”
The iPhone, on the other hand, was a hit out of the gate in large part because of whoopie-cushion apps and other whimsical options that put the device’s would-be users immediately at ease.
The circular Roomba robotic vacuum is another example of a tech gadget that has won a warm following, Case said. A YouTube video famously shows a cat in a shark costume riding a Roomba across a kitchen.
SECURITY A CONCERN
Security has become a major concern for those who work in the Internet of Things space, according to another IoTFuse speaker.
An estimated 70 percent of Internet of Things devices are vulnerable to some sort of malicious attack given that evildoers have a veritable menu of unauthorized-access options and all the time in the world to implement them, said Storm Otis, a security expert at Minneapolis-based The Nerdery, a software developer.
Devices that have been famously vulnerable in recent years include a baby monitor, a smart toilet, a smart refrigerator and a telescope-equipped sniper rifle with software-based aiming, Otis said.
Hardware makers have to learn that security must be “baked in at the beginning,” he said.
SHOULD IT GO TO MARKET?
VanderMey posed another weighty question: Should an Internet of Things product ship in the first place? Not every seemingly amazing idea for a prototype should necessarily be refined into a commercial product, he said.
“It starts with an engineer saying, ‘I wonder if I could,’” he said. “It turns into a rough prototype that gets people thinking it’s cool. It becomes an idea that forms the basis of wild speculation. And it gets funded through some mechanism.
“And then it goes nowhere,” VanderMey said.
