The Internet of Things: More Efficient Than You

to affect us as human beings. And one of the things that we wanted to talk about was this concept of the Internet of things. Now, Lauren, if I came up to you and I said, what is this Internet of things concept? I just don't understand. How would you describe it? Well, basically, it's the idea that all of the devices that we use, not just our computers and our cell phones, but also our cars and our houses, are going to be communicating with each other in order

to provide the best environment possible for every human person. Right.

This idea that we're going to have ubiquitous sensors around us constantly gathering data, crunching that data in some sort of way, and then using the data in different ways, whether that's to serve it up to us saying, oh, by the way, your energy usage this month has been such and such, or oh, by the way, you've burned x number of calories because you did all this running around today, or it will actually make devices behave in a very specific way, and it kind of takes human

interaction completely out of that equation, so that your thermostat, for example, might adjust itself based upon the weather and maybe even your own bodies temperature. So it's kind of this neat idea of technology shaping the world around us. Uh, Joe, why don't we talk a little bit about what the

video kind of covered and what we're gonna cover today. Okay, Well, in the video, we were talking about how we focused a lot on how the Internet of Things will change the end user experience of the world, and and by that I mean just the way the world looks to you and me um And we talked about customizable environments, which means that you know, the room in your house might have any number of hidden elements that are conspiring to make your life more comfortable and easier, and they're

taking data to learn what you like and and and how to fit you best. So this could be lighting and music, environmental control like you were saying, Um, but I thought in this podcast one thing that would be interesting to talk about would be an even more invisible aspect of how the Internet of Things will change society, which is how it will change efficiency in the processes we don't always see in industry, in civic systems, sure care anything, Yeah, yeah, I mean we're talking again about

devices that are are taking endless measurements and then sending that data back in some fashion to make our lives easier and uh. And in manufacturing, that's a very simple way of of changing huge outcomes. I mean, manufacturing processes have changed quite a bit ever since the Industrial Revolution, but the idea of the Internet Things could bring that

to an even more precise level. Right when you have machines that have computers at every single stop gap of the process that are you know, calling home and telling you what the machine is doing, how efficient it's being, how fast the motors are running, how fast the products being turned out, then you can you can use that to completely optimize everything every step of the way, and furthermore,

have that machine tell you when it's about to break. Yeah, which of course would be a huge benefit you if you already know that you need to do some preventive maintenance on a machine before it breaks down. Uh, that can mean the difference between a profitable month or a disaster. And Joe, you you have a story you were telling us earlier about kind of you gave us a scenario where this makes sense. Oh yeah, Well, I mean you just have to imagine you're you're in a furniture factory.

Maybe you're the floor manager there, and you produce a certain kind of upholstered chair. Now, you know, for a while it's been taking X number of hours to complete the production from you know, when you first get the parts until when you ship it. Suddenly, this month it's

taking twice as long now in lots of factories. You might have no idea why, because we've got humans dealing with the machines at every step along the way, and you have no devices to really track the difference in how long it takes to produce this thing and give

real time analytics and feedback. With the Internet of Things, each particular cog along the production line is both uploading and downloading information, so the production line itself is teaching and learning right, So then by the if there is something that's that's causing a slower production than normal, you can actually see where the bottlenecks occurring. And then or if the if it's an intelligent enough system, it anticipates that and fixes it so that you never have that

problem to start with. Uh, it's definitely something that could impact us down the line. This is something that you know, anyone who works in that industry, obviously it would affect them. But if you're asking, all right, well how about the average person, the consumer, how would that affect this person? Well, increased efficiencies could mean that you see prices start to come down on products because it takes less money to produce them, and as competition rises, that could see that

the prices come down. You know, you don't have to worry about that profit margin being affected because the cost of production and has gone down so that you can actually lower the cost to the consumer. That doesn't always happen. Obviously, we have industries out there where the cost of productions come down, let's keep the price the same way. But it's something that could happen sure, and if it happens in your industry, that means and you get to hypothetically

make more money, so it's not a bad thing either. No, that that tends to make shareholders very happy as it turns out, And you were mentioned Joe also about the the civic uses. One of my favorite illustrations of the Internet of Things is the idea that with the true implementation of the Internet things, that it's at its most

pervasive level, traffic doesn't exist. It can be completely automated, so that, for example, if you live in say Atlanta, like the three of us do, and have to commute through Atlanta like the three of us do, then you don't get in traffic jams that take up how many how many hours a week? It's the average, it's like for the average Atlanta and I think they spend around

half an hour per uh per trip. Yeah, it's it's well, it could be more than that actually, because I think in Atlanta the average commute is close to around thirty miles, which is that's a that's a long commute for someone who lives in the city where they're working. It means that a lot of us are not living very close to wherever our offices are. And on top of that,

Atlanta traffic is pretty bad. It's it does regularly rank in those top cities of bad traffic cities like Los Angeles or New York or d C. There are several in the United States that are known as being bad when you're a driver, just for the sense of how

much time you're going to spend sitting in traffic. But with the Internet of Things, you could have all these devices that detect changes in traffic and either relay that information to drivers so that they can react proactively and take a different route so that they're no longer at risk of being delayed because of a change in traffic, or if you pair this with say an autonomous car, the cars themselves start to adjust without your input at all,

and next thing you know, you're where you need to be. Um and beyond that, we're talking about improvements that could allow things like dynamic control of traffic signals. So the example I always give is, imagine you're driving home at three in the morning, as the three of us often are doing, but because we burned the midnight oil at our office, not because we're all party animals. That's also true,

but not not material. But you're driving home at three in the morning, and you get to that infamous traffic stop where the light has turned red and you know you're going to be sitting there for three minutes while there's no cross traffic at all. With a truly dynamic system, the traffic components already know you're approaching, they already know there's no traffic coming the other way, and they change

all the yeah. So that means at three in the morning, you have the magical experience of all green lights all the time, so that red lights when you see them, become uh, something that's unusual and hopefully you remember what to do. But but more importantly, well, that same principle could be translated to matters of life and death, not just convenience. I mean, if you imagine um the problems

that are first responder encounters. You know, I don't know if you ever had that experience of you're sitting in traffic at rush hour and nobody's moving, and suddenly behind you you hear a siren and you see an ambulance coming through and it just can't penetrate them, and there's nothing you can do. There's something it can do. Everyone is at a standstill, right, It's just stuck, and you know, in the back of that ambulance, somebody you know, could

be dying and they have to get through, but they can't. Now, imagine if the traffic grid was smart, if the cars were smart, they were all communicating, If the traffic lights were smart, they were all communicating. The grid itself could clear a path because it knows where the first responder needs to go. You know, before you even heard the siren that it was coming that you needed to pull over. The traffic lights would know, so they could block off

traffic from cross streets. Yeah, this is truly a matter of life and death. It could mean that it saves lives. This the internet things could literally save and prolonged life in that fashion. And beyond that, it's it's something that could also impact on a macro scale, our energy use and and even our energy production. Lauren, you were telling me about something along those lines. Yeah, if if railways

were smarter, they could use GPS two track trains. Also the add in the length and the and the load into the data and minimax the performance and fuel usage. Um Also with the production of energy itself, you could have wind turbines that no one to shut down due to danger from high winds. At an individual level, they could they could be detecting what's going on with the weather if if they start freezing up in the winter

automatically speed up to knock off ice. One wind farm in particular did to study where they input a whole bunch of the smart technology and over the course of a year, they had about a three pc increase in energy output, which sounds really small until you take into consideration that that's one point two million dollars in additional revenue. Tiny, tiny changes in industries can end up having huge impacts

down the road. It's uh, it can be very simple to sort of right off something where you hear of small percentage, but it means a big change. I mean, especially or something as large as as energy production. So you're talking about having this this system that can intelligently react to different different inputs, whether it's environmental or or performance or even a human factor and be able to adjust so that's giving the most efficient output. I mean,

that's an amazing story. And obviously once we reach this point in the world, our experiences day to day will be very different. I think because we you know, things like traffic, I can't imagine you know what a generation who grows up without traffic would feel like if suddenly there was a traffic jam. You know, the green light

scenario sounds like magic to me. It does again Arthur C. Clark right there saying about the you know, as as technologies get more sophisticated, they eventually reach a point where they are indistinguishable from magic, and that would be a wonderful world to live in. I do I do worry about living in a world that would occasionally need to control all delete uh, but you know, we tried turning it off and on again. But that that to me. The bonuses, the positives about this world are so phenomenal

that it would be unthinkable not to pursue them. Sure, and lots of lots of companies are doing that currently. The g is calling it the industrial Internet right now. IBM has a phrase that they're calling Smarter Planet. Cisco, of course, has the Internet of Everything that they keep talking about. Sure. Yeah, So everyone has a different kind of way of summing this up in a in a little a little title, but it's it's all saying the same thing. Yeah. The point is is that it's incredibly

worthwhile financially and environmentally and socially. Yeah, so I'm I'm excited to see this world come about. I cannot wait to find out what my own personal reality is going to be, especially considering that I won't have to worry about traffic anymore. That that I I know, I go on about that, but really, if you've lived in a place where there's been a lot of traffic, I can you all understand it? The idea of no traffic is something that we think. It's just a fairy tale. I

think we should get in on it. The naming, Oh yeah, well we'll have to come up with our own version names so we can get in on the ground floor. Right, Yeah, well we'll start. We'll start brainstorming names for the Internet of Things. I vote Dave, but other names are are fully it's all up to discussion. Just remember my decisions final and then we're all good. Um and guys, we're going to have this amazing websites launching on March first, and it's called forward Thinking dot com. That's f w

thinking dot com. At that site, you're going to be able to find copies of our audio podcast. You're gonna be able to see the video series Forward Thinking, which is really amazing, and you're going to be able to read some blog posts written by these two amazing co host of mine, also some written by me as well. Uh So, I highly encourage you to go to that website check it out. Uh once it launches on March one. It's really going to be something special. I'm very excited

about it, and I'm excited to see the future. Guys, hope you are too a little bit kind of Joe dout alright, excellent, We're all in agreement here. I hope you guys are too out there and we hope to hear from you soon. For more on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,