InfoComm and The Internet of Things

This week the Brewmaster had the pleasure of attending InfoComm, the largest event in the world for AV professionals. Luckily for us, this year’s InfoComm was held in our own backyard at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. At the opening keynote, the wise panel of four men from Crestron, Samsung, Harman and Cisco all sat down with Nick Bilton to discuss one major topic that especially got our tech wheels turning. Behold! The Internet of Things. “The Internet of Things (IoT) is a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.” To put this in digestible information, let’s look at Daniel Burrus’ example in his 2004 post in Wired. In 2007, a bridge in Minnesota collapsed due to inadequate steel plates. When this bridge fell several people lost their lives. IoT comes into play when the bridge is rebuilt. We can use smart cement, meaning the cement will have sensors that will provide data for the stresses and cracks of the bridge preventing a total collapse. This is just one example of how IoT will fundamentally change the way in which our world operates. Self-driving cars, smart cities operating on a grid and smart houses are just a few more examples. To grace the surface of how these sensors would work, the data given by the sensors would be sent to a cloud-computing application where it would sort the data into intelligent, useful information available in real time. This is why IoT is so valuable. It’s the infrastructure needed to process all the data making our world a more efficient, safe and smart. Within the next five years, IoT will have changed the way all businesses operate on a global scale, including small businesses. All this data brings privacy and security into question. How will all this information be monitored and secured? According to the Federal Trade Commission’s report on the internet of things, some of the general concerns of having every device connected include:

• enabling unauthorized access and misuse of personal information
• facilitating attacks on other systems
• creating risks to personal safety
• collection of personal information, habits, locations, and physical conditions over time
• Use this data by companies to make credit, insurance, and employment decisions

During the panel discussion at InfoComm, this questions was proposed from the audience. Mike Walker, Director of Operations at Cisco responded with great examples. He said back in the 1800s, there were no drinking and driving laws. Once people and government officials realized there were safety implications of drinking and driving, the proper laws were set in place and enforced. It will be the same learning process with the Internet of Things because it is something that simply has not been experienced before. We will have to be attentive to the drastic learning process that comes with the new technological revolution. Mike was a big advocate for being wise on what information we share. Society has to catch up with the technological developments and change how we think of what we do and post because now there’s absolutely data being archived on those decisions. We’re curious to know your thoughts on the Internet of Things. This may be the first time you’re hearing the phrase, or maybe you’ve had some time to think and process what this means for our world as a whole. What are your thoughts? Reach out to us at @digitalbrew_co!