BIVBlog #7: Why the “Internet of Things” doesn’t take off (yet)

While sales people talk about the “Internet of Things”, “Home Automation” and “Industry 4.0” with growing desparation, people are widely reluctant to actually spend mony on them—and they actually have reasons to be wary. To make these ideas actually work, a number of things still need to be taken care of.

Table of Contents

00:00:30 IT vs. real-world product lifetimes
00:02:07 Long term support and interoperability
00:04:05 Real-world reliability in general
00:05:24 Running without maintenance downtimes
00:05:50 End user “system administrators”
00:07:20 Network reliability
00:07:45 Wired or wireless local networks?
00:10:48 Internet access reliability
00:11:04 DSL vs. Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH)
00:11:55 Detour: Emergency phone call infrastructure
00:14:20 ISP marketing lies and their effects
00:15:52 End user “system administrators” again
00:16:50 “Full” computers vs. microcontrollers
00:17:10 Security considerations
00:18:35 Device manipulation by third party attackers
00:18:48 Example: Network printers
00:19:50 Device manipulation by manufacturers
00:20:00 Devices spying on their owners/users
00:22:00 Why security updates are a no-go
00:22:40 Multi-layer security as a solution?
00:23:30 Manufacturers locking people out of their own devices
00:23:50 The batteries in Renault’s Zoe electric car
00:26:00 Tesla electric cars logging their every move
00:27:30 Who owns my MP3 player?
00:28:10 The legislative issue
00:28:30 An industry at the mercy of a single manufacturer playing foul
00:29:20 The economics of scale
00:31:00 International issues
00:31:10 Cartels and monopolies
00:31:40 Big IT industries vs. the “Maker scene”
00:32:30 Environments for innovation
00:32:50 The impact of Arduino
00:33:40 Crowdfunding
00:34:00 The “Internet of Things” is mostly a non-technical challenge

References and Further Reading

Renault Zoe

The original posting at Heise Online (German)
Tesla vs. New York Times
I’m not going to give any links—otherwise I’d be accused of siding with whoever seems to get the “better” links here… But I’m sure you know how to find out about these anyway.
Economics of scale
There’s a pretty good page on this on Wikipedia.
Arduino
Again, you’ll find lots of stuff on the web; here is their official home page.

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Long term IPv6 evangelist/book author/trainer/consultant and generic Unix guy (*BSD, Linux, Solaris, and about a dozen more).

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