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The Internet Of Things Is Becoming More Difficult To Escape (npr.org)
An anonymous reader writes: After a long day, many of us try to set down our technology and unplug from the world around us. But, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center, over the next few years, that will become much more difficult to do. The Internet of things will continue to spread between now and 2026, until human and machine connectivity becomes ubiquitous and unavoidably present, according to experts who participated in what Pew described as a "nonscientific canvassing." About 1,200 participants were asked: "As automobiles, medical devices, smart TVs, manufacturing equipment and other tools and infrastructure are networked, is it likely that attacks, hacks or ransomware concerns in the next decade will cause significant numbers of people to decide to disconnect, or will the trend toward greater connectivity of objects and people continue unabated?" The answers they gave were telling: 15 percent said significant numbers of people would disconnect while 85 percent said most people would just move more deeply into connected life. Unplugging is futile, and plugging in is unavoidable. It's already difficult to create distance from the technology that surrounds us, but as connectivity increases, it might become impossible to do so.
It's not 'unavoidable' in any way shape or form and this whole story is complete and utter BULLSHIT. You do not have to BUY ANY 'IoT' things AT ALL to start with, and you do not HAVE to use them, either.
> concerns in the next decade will cause significant numbers of people to decide to disconnect
Not in the next decade, but now.
30 years ago I wanted things like "networked thermostat or blinds or whatever", it was called domotic, it was on an intranet and it seems cool, but very expensive.
Now there is a lot of connected devices (some still $$$) but there is no way I want my devices on others people servers (clouds) with poor security and closed firmware.
And you know what, finally, we don't need IoT, I don't need my washer/dryer on the internet, I can close my blinds myself too.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Why would you want to add all this complexity to your life, I just don't get it. Appliances are supposed to free up your time but if you go gonzo trying to optimize their use you will achieve exactly the opposite.
love is just extroverted narcissism
The internet of things is a mess. I really dislike that catchphrase too. I believe the idea of a physical connection to the internet being unavoidable is very much a logical fallacy.
I prefer things that do not loop in because I can control them better. When I buy them I own those products and that means I get to decide how to use them.
The moment I realized I would have to install an app to make my coffee maker work, was the same moment I bought a stainless microfilter and a french press and took that thing back to the store.
Throw out anything that loops in -- you don't need it! The ONLY reason they want to do that is to get you hooked. Either so you don't use someone else's coffee or so you don't use refilled ink. Whatever. Just put your money on good quality gear that is more analog and you'll be MUCH happier.
And the last place one should look for any kind of scientific discovery is through non-scientific canvassing. The opinions of the unwashed masses are popular ones, but that does in no means make them correct.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The old science fiction cliche repeated again
Resistance is futile!
Resistance is useless!
I agree with the overall sentiment, but the problem is that IoT is a category which encompasses essentially everything that has electrical power. My bathroom scale is online, and that's been quite handy. So boom, I'm technically participating in this stuff, even though I wholeheartedly agree that Alexa controlled lightbulbs are an insult to everyone who isn't disabled. I get customers who feel similarly about smartphones. They say they aren't useful. An I'm like, any one or ten apps might indeed be useless, but you're saying the whole device category has nothing to offer to you? Having a gps, flashlight, alarm clock, diet tracker, todo list, calendar, web browser, camera, weather forecast device, pedometer, level, a thousand books, fingerprint payment system, calculator, and photo album in your pocket isn't useful to you? Really? Just my opinion, but I think some point at a bunch of useless features and miss the useful ones. Having your phone alert you to a flooded basment is still just as iot as an iphone ceiling fan.
This article focused on how people put up with risk to get what they want, their prime example was car accidents are accepted to because we love cars.
The problem is that the LOT usually is for the benefit of the COMPANY, not the owner. They find something that people want just a little bit and sell it based on that convenience. Take the silly "BUG MY HOUSE" products now being sold, that offer internet searches and music in exchange for letting companies place always on microphones in your home. Huge benefit to the corporations, hue invasion of your privacy, all in exchange for not having to take your phone out of your pocket and tap one button before making the request.
Yes, silly people buy these things. But people d not have to. Their advantage is minimal and I truly doubt it will ever achieve the ubiquity of cars, fridges, TVs, etc.
This is typical. In general IOT is not a huge innovation allowing new consumer things for a minor cost, instead it is a huge corporate benefit with a minor consumer benefit.
It's not revolutionizing our life, it is just revolutionizing corporate business.
As such, it will probably be similar to Premium cable channels, like HBO. Some people, but not all or even most, will buy these things. Many people will refuse.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
They're very often 'abnormally cheap' because they're subsidized to encourage adoption of lower-energy-usage lighting products. They did the same with CFL bulbs. Where I live (Sacramento valley), SMUD (local power company) often subsidizes things like that -- and not IoT lighting, either, by the way.
..oh, but would I put it past IoT manufacturers to sell at a loss, just to encourage people to buy? Sure I would.
Scott Adams might be right. God committed suicide and we are the aftermath trying to put him back together again. Once computers are omnipresent, our only choice will be to become one with the hive mind.
On a more serious note, computers have been for several decades now enhancing our human ability. Very few jobs are immune as a person that uses a computer can out compete the person who doesn't. In areas like accounting, one person can now do the job that 10 people used to do. As computers continue to make humans better, smarter, and more efficient, it will be hard to hide. Unfortunately though, making a job more efficient doesn't mean that the job becomes more enjoyable. In a lot of cases, by making jobs more efficient, we are taking the enjoyment out of them. I'm not sure what the solution is to this.
Industrial IoT Strategy Is Top Of Mind For Partners....yep, harder. http://www.crn.com/news/intern...
... these things had good security. It seems that you can't go a month without hearing about some IoT hack or another. It's bad enough when it's an IoT camera in a kid's toy (or nursery camera), but how long before somebody uses an IoT stove to start a house fire?
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
If you break open an LED bulb you might find a small black chip wired to the power lines, and it might have printed on it: "NSA PoE: You No Touch!" If you do, and it does, you are being spied on. The LED bulb has a camera with sends 64K resolution films to the NSA using their own super-secret proprietary Power Over Ethernet back all the way to their secret headquarters, which is NOT that big black glass building in the mall parking lot.
Oh, if it doesn't have the chip, the LED bulb was OK, but you can't use it anymore, since you broke open. That is an additional counter-intelligence measure . . . and . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
...it is what it is connected to! I like the idea of devices all around me sending information to a central information hub that I can query and control. I don't like the idea of each device sending sensitive information to its 'true owner's web server' somewhere in the cloud where it can be mined, hacked, or outright stolen by an employee. I don't want all those companies able to disconnect me from my data just because I don't feel like paying some exorbitant monthly fee. There are a whole host of issues with the current IoT architecture. We need a completely different architecture where all MY devices send and receive data to/from MY central controller. I get to choose how the data is used and who I want to share it with.
I bought one of these awesome, super duper water coolers from NZXT. The Kraken X62
https://www.nzxt.com/products/kraken-x62
Pretty cool colors and what not. The control panel for it (CAM software) asks for a cloud login which then of course runs every time you login. There seemed to be a problem just after I got it where the settings for fan, pump, and colors would not save between restarts. It has a guest mode, but even that lost settings or would insist on loading with reduced functionality without the cloud login. Huge support thread ensued.
http://support.camwebapp.com/forums/252256-cam-bugs/suggestions/17316232-kraken-x62
You know it's getting bad when even a CPU cooler "requires" a cloud login to work properly.
Incandescent bulbs are huge waste of electricity and have a very dull ugly color. That might have something more to do with it. They cost more now than the house brand LED bulbs at HD or Lowes
love is just extroverted narcissism
What's increasingly difficult to stomach is festering evil pervading tech industry.
Used to be somewhat focused on creating better tools to get shit done.
Now it's basically marketing Trojan horses to the public. Massive firms engaged in intentionally psychologically engineering products to maximize technological addiction and pervasive cyber stalking leveraged against consumer to ensure not one extra cent is ever left on the table.
The reality has always been dwindling returns on connectivity. IoT goons are laughably unable to communicate a coherent value proposition. Just spraying Internet dust all over the place isn't going to make anyone's lives better except those few behind the scenes leveraging marketing terms and virtue signaling to justify further ownage of the user to say nothing of creating unnecessary vectors for compromise by governments and criminal organizations the world over.
The road to hell is the path of least resistance.
Incandescent bulbs are huge waste of electricity and have a very dull ugly color.
No, CRI of Incandescent bulbs is 100. Name any commercially available LED lighting system that achieves the same. You of course can't because no such thing currently exists.
Here is why people embrace the IoT no matter what.
If I want to get paranoid about LED bulbs, I'll ask why an LED lamp that lasts 100,000 hours is married to a driver (DC power supply) that lasts 15,000 hours. When I do the math on lumens per watt, to get lumens per ampere, I find that 36VDC can provide the same amount of light (from 3 each 12VDC LEDs in series) per ampere as 120VAC can provide using 4 foot fluorescent fixtures. So, the same wiring can be used for DC leds that last 100,000 hours in the lighting fixture when a 36VDC driver that has a significantly shorter life span is located adjacent to the load center that powers the formerly AC lighting circuit. This also keeps the lighting fixtures cooler, as much of the heat associated with AC LED lamps is generated by the driver.
If I could I would travel back in time to set up a second Slashdot account, spending decades living on the proceeds of my foreknowledge just to arrive at this moment in time where my elderly account could mod up your comment since it had not yet posted.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't know what CRI is but my LLC (looks like crap) index puts incandescent lighting at the top.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I guess you've never read the Consumer Reports magazine. For decades, Jeep has been among the very worst automobiles on the market. All the US made cars were poorly rated, especially Chrysler cars and less so GM cars. But Jeep was just awful.
Additionally, a motorcycle gang was just busted for exclusively stealing Jeeps. They were able to get key code info from a dealer and they discovered that it was easy to open the hood from outside and disable the alarm system.
Yes, avoid IoT crap while you can, but note that even the dinosaur Jeep is full of hackable stuff.
...omphaloskepsis often...
my wife's new vehicle comes with 3G internet built-in... there are dubious for-pay features, but even if you don't pay, they're apparently required to give you free 911 and Assistance calling.
This is one of the few areas where I have a legitimate ethical dilemma about requiring IoT-style connectivity.
Having a vehicle summon help automatically after an accident and provide advance information to emergency services if no-one in the vehicle is able to do so is literally a life-saver, and is fast becoming a legally mandated feature of new vehicles in much of the world.
On the other hand, having such a phone-home system used for anything else, including things like sending telemetry data back to the vehicle manufacturer or dealer about anything whatsoever, is well into creepy surveillance world. Having anything other than one-way communication available is also a potential security risk.
I have a tracker in my car anyway. It was required to get insurance from literally anyone I asked, and insurance is a legal requirement in my country regardless of its practical benefit. But the tracker is operated by an independent company, whose agreement is with me and me alone, and is not connected to any other system other than I think for power. The only thing anyone can do with it is activate the tracking system so police can try to locate the vehicle if necessary, and they have no incentive to do that other than at my request or in a genuine emergency.
If I could buy a new vehicle with no remote communications but the anti-theft and emergency-call functionality and any self-contained radio or navigation systems I chose to include, that would be great. But of course no-one wants to sell me one any more, because too many people think having an integral WiFi hotspot follow them everywhere they go is wonderful and have no idea of the potential downsides.
Sadly, given the safety, efficiency and comfort improvements of modern vehicles, cars are one of the few devices where updating to something much more connected really will be a practical necessity before long. At least for now I can still buy one that I theoretically control myself, and there's apparently some information out there about the electronics so I can make a slightly informed decision about who the least bad options are from a security and privacy perspective.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I admire the sentiment, but unless you really are going to live as a hermit off the grid, just doing what you can to avoid this sort of intrusion personally is never going to be enough in our brave new world. What we actually need is for our laws and more importantly the social/ethical views motivating them to catch up with the capabilities of modern technologies.
The real solution to excessive privacy intrusions and security lapses by businesses is remarkably simple: they just have to cost the businesses and those running them significantly more than they stood to gain.
The real solution to excessive privacy intrusions and security lapses by governments is for enough people to become aware of them and the negative consequences that the political will moves.
Unfortunately the latter is probably a prerequisite for the former as well. Even more unfortunately it probably means multiple very bad things have to happen very visibly and to a lot of people to overcome the ignorance/apathy surrounding these issues among non-geeks.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
... Until it is *mandatory* to connect your IOT fridge to the internet, which i am pretty sure will never happen (data protection, right of consummer, and the problem of legacy place without internet) , what's the problem to buy an IOT fridge which is not connected to anything whatsoever ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"News" About the The Internet Of Things Is Becoming More Difficult To Escape
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There were dumb-asses that complained about how catsup tasted when they started selling it in bottles because it didn't taste like a tin can.
love is just extroverted narcissism
...is widespread advanced brickerbot software. When everybody's internet-connected-whatever gets bricked a week after they buy it, the manufacturers will feel pain. And I can assure you that they probably don't have a clue about real security, either.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user