5 Easy To Understand Examples Of The Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the products that will be connected in the future. This includes anything with an on or off switch. Information from our products will be sent to our phone, to our computer and vice-versa. Data about our behavior will be sent directly from the products we use back to the companies we purchase from. The companies we purchase from will send us content directly through the products we buy. These are connected devices and Gartner predicts there will be 21 billion of these connected devices by 2020. IoT will be a big part of our every day lives. It makes sense that in the future technology should enhance the customer experience, finding helpful ways to update, improve, educate, inspire and overall add value to our lives.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you lived in a small town where all the local stores already knew what you wanted and needed before you wanted or needed it? That’s how I see the world of IoT. It’s like you go to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread, and that sends a signal to the butcher where you will buy your turkey. That butcher sends a signal to the produce store where you will get your tomato and lettuce. Let’s scratch this idea of you walking around to specialty stores gathering things. Let’s imagine someone or some “thing” is doing this for you while you’re at work. Perhaps they also pick up some detergent for you while you’re out because they get an alert you are low. Or maybe “they” know you like mustard, and there’s a sale on a specialty gourmet mustard. “They” ask if you want some. I realize I’m being vague when it comes to “they,” but at this point none of us can truly imagine how big and influential IoT will be on our lives. We don’t exactly know every form these products will take in every day life. You might be thinking, “Blake, how would ‘they’ know to buy gourmet mustard that’s on sale. Can a product really ‘know’ a person so well?” It looks like we’re moving toward yes. It’s likely our products in the future will know us so well they will make decisions for us when we’re no there. Think about customer experience and customer service. Would you be mad if a product made decisions about itself when you were not there, for example if it were broken? I would not be mad if my product fixed itself while I was out. I assume you wouldn’t be mad either.

When you search for lists of IoT products online you read a lot of seemingly technical jargon about embedded products. But what about products we can easily understand? Products we use now or we could easily imagine using? That is what I sought out to find for this column and here are five easy to understand, tangible examples of IoT.