The Internet of Things

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligence greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own, that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Burma, Why did you say, Burma? Uh?

What we just did a double quote? Um, I was going to I didn't. We were sort of going over what we were going to talk about. I'm gonna throw Jonathan a very non curvy curveball here. Um. A while ago, about maybe almost twenty years ago, is is mid nineties? I uh listened to the founder of mind Spring Enterprises, which was an Internet service provider here in the United States.

His name is Charles Brewer, and he was talking about how in the future, um, and he wasn't talking distant future, you know, he was talking realistically in the next few years. He was saying in the mid nineties, uh, that you would have stuff in your house. It wouldn't just be you connecting to the internet to use email or the web. He said, in in the next few years, your stuff is going to be connected to the Internet and it's

going to talk to one another. And you know, he was talking about appliances and things, and I thought, well, that's kind of weird. I mean, how would you do that. Um. Of course, at the time, we were still in a very higle up world where you had to have a modem attached to your computer or built into your computer that dialed over the phone line and would you know, connect to the internet. And it was very slow and it was very spotty, and you know, it worked pretty well.

But I thought, well that that would be kind of cool. And it seemed uh, you know, of course it's not jet jet packs and uh, hoverboards, but it was at the same time you know, kind of far off in my head because I was thinking, I don't you know, I guess people would adopt that. I don't know, it seems kind of cool to me. Well, as it turns out, we really have moved on to that kind of a model, although we're not quite there yet. But um, this is

what people call the Internet of things. And the reason we're talking about this is that actually was contacted by a alien intelligence. Yes, but that is not what I was going to mention. You know, now they have to visit me again, Chris, Thank you so much, because I had plans this weekend anyway. No, I was also contacted by a tech conference to have a panel discussion about this very topic, the Internet of things, and I thought, well, heck, I'm I'm already preparing for that. Why don't we make

that a podcast as well? And here we are, so let's talk a little bit about where we are right now. So, um, we're still not at a point where everything is talking to everything else, and there are a few different reasons for that. I think one of the reasons is, uh, like Chris was saying, you know, broadband rollout was probably a little more gradual than we had anticipated when the futurists were first starting to think about the possibilities of

the Internet of things. But that that's less of a problem now for a good percentage of the population of the United States, as well as for many other countries. Clearly it's still a problem. Not everyone has broadband Internet access now. In some cases, the information that these different products would be sending back and forth would be very small packets of data, So perhaps broadband access isn't as important. I remember back as a nostalgic cast, as a slight tangent.

I remember buying uh. You may remember this to the the age of when, um. There were publications like Yahoo Internet Life back in the nineties when and there were books too with Internet sites on them, and you would go, Okay, so I got this Internet thing, what am I going to do with it? One of the things I've had in a book was this UH drink machine that was hooked up to the Internet and you could and this was all text. This is not you know, pretty worldwide

web stuff. This was You would ping the machine and it would tell you how many of each drink it had sold that day. And I was thinking, so you can figure out how many people within the population of that region had diabetes. Well was a it was a college campus. Now, okay, so all of them. Yeah, so we're we're talking about remember when we've talked about the early Internet, the places that were wired, we're basically government facilities and um educational institutions. So yes, they had broad

basearch facilities. Exactly, they had broadband people in the the computer science department and whirre their drink machine and you could pin it, you know, because why not? That's more or less the deal. And that was why it was interesting, because why not? But yeah, I mean, and and it can be useful looking at it today. You could have a vendor looking at okay, well we don't need to

restock this one today, send somebody out there. You can, you could consolidate, but back then it was just for fun.

Right today, it makes a lot of sense. Like if you own a vending machine company and you stock those vending machines and you are able to look at a glance and see where you need to send a delivery person in order to restock those machines, then you may not need as many delivery people on your staff because you don't have to have someone go out and physically check each machine, and and if the machines can alert you if something's wrong, then you know to send someone

out to repair it. Um, there are a lot of you know, you don't have to wait for a call from a client or happen or for your maintenance guy to happen upon it on a on a scheduled series of rounds. Uh. Yeah, there are a lot of different reasons for it. And then we have the consumer side, like actual consumer products, not just you know, commercial products, huh, and the possibilities that that holds. And they're already products out on the market right now that have some form

of network capability. Um, they don't tend to all work together necessarily, like you might have a bunch of independent networks within your home network. Right. So for example, uh, you could have a you can be purchasing your appliances from a single company and you get a washer and a dryer, and they have this connectivity ability so that the washer and the dryer share information with each other.

So when you put a load of laundry in the washer and you set it to a particular kind of setting, like let's say it's permanent press, it sends that information to the dryer, so that the dryer already has the proper settings ready to go when you transfer the wash from the washer dryer, so that way you don't have to reset the dryer settings. It's already taken care of. Uh. It might also even send you an alert somehow through through the internet so that you know when your loads

laundry are done. So you might get a ping on a smartphone or a tablet or your computer, or if we're going to look into the future a little bit, your television. Because you've got internet connected televisions out there. It's only a matter of time before we get to a point where these internet connected televisions have a the ability to show alerts that are related to other appliance

that are in your house. We're not quite there yet, but that's mainly because the approach most companies are taking is to create a proprietary communication protocol for their products. Right, so Company a's products do not communicate with Company bees products. So unless you're buying everything from the same company, then the the communication protocols aren't compatible and they don't understand

each other. They can't communicate. You need to C three PO right there in the middle because they can speak over six million different languages, including vaporators. One of their first jobs was anyway, um, the point being that you know, the odds of you finishing that quote or yeah, never tell me the odds. Many both died to bring us this podcast. So the the the different the different networks can't really communicate with one another. So that's kind of

where we are right now. But we do have lots of products out there, including ones like refrigerators that can talk to stove and ovens. So you've got again from the same company. So you might have a refrigerator that's Internet connected and you think, well, why would I want that? Well, if you haven't a fridge that connects to the internet and it actually is able to keep an inventory of the stuff that you put within that fridge, you know, if there's some method whether you know you want it

to be as seamless as possible. Ideally you would have a method in there where when you put something in the fridge, it automatically detected its presence, knew what it was, and logged it so it would know when you put it in there, uh, and it would know what it was. And even in a real ideal situation. It would know when that product expires, so it could tell you, like, hey,

you've got some milk in the fridge. It's about to go bad because it's muscling up to the potato salad, So you want to make sure you're gonna go ahead and drink that. Um, So just don't walk in on the mayonnaise. It's dress boy. We were definitely punchy. We recorded an episode that had more bloopers in it than the previous previous three years of recording combined. So we're all punchy now. But anyway, Yeah, the fridge would be able to keep you alert on what you have in

your fridge. It could even give you recipes for stuff that you can make based upon what is in the refrigerator right now. So for example, you might think, well, why am I gonna have for dinner tonight and you could ask You could ask your refrigerator and they could say, well, based upon what you've got in the fridge, this is the kind of stuff you can make. Or it may

say you could have this meal. You just need to go out and buy this, this, and this, so the ingredients are complete and and with the possibility of purchasing stuff online. You could even get to a point where you you you authorize through your fridge purchases. Well, and and that's the the Well, there are two sort of things that that occurring to me to sort of funny things. UM. One of which is, there's no reason we can't do this right now or or really a couple of years ago.

It's just we haven't. UM. So it's not it's not a a technology that we're waiting for it to develop. UM. This is all pretty simple stuff really when you get right down to it. UM. The other the other promise, I mean, this really could be a very convenient thing if they go forward with it, because it's the kind of thing that you're you're talking about that would make life really easy if you have the money to buy this kind of stuff and the services available to you.

So let's say you have UM, your internet connected fridge and the services necessary to complete this conversation. So you got stuff in the fridge and some of it's starting to expire and you've used some of it. So UH, there are f I D tags radio frequency identification tags on your things. So you have UM milk and UH, you have cheese and things like that, and as you use it up, the fridge realizes, hey, it's no longer

in the fridge. Um, so I'm going to Uh, Jonathan has already said that he wants more milk as soon as he runs out of milk, So I'm gonna place an order with the local shopping delivery company and they're just gonna bring Jonathan more milk and they're gonna build it to his card, so he gets a regular delivery of milk because he's out, and uh, the fridge has automatically told his local delivery company, Hey, uh, he needs milk and celery and other stuff you know that he's

run out of or he wants to make this this meal. Um. So really this could be ultra convenient because you could just have stuff show up, go ahead and put it in the fridge, and it just runs on a normal cycle like that, so you don't have to make shopping trips and uh, you don't have to look through the

fridge to identify what you're gonna eat. But that's all sort of a well what if because in the in the nineties, when um, these types of delivery services we're starting to take off, it was kind of early for them to do so and I think it's scared a lot of people, which is why you don't they're they're sort of hit or miss. They're in some places but not another's. They're in a enighble head down the street,

but they won't deliver to your house. A lot of these scases back in the day, they expanded too quickly, they got they got so large that they weren't able to uh, to handle their own they weren't able to administrate the size of the company, and so as a result, they eventually collapsed in on themselves. Because it's not a cheap business to be in. You know, it's a lot of warehouse management, a lot of deliveries. Uh, it's it's a tricky business. But also I was going to mention

that the other possibilities. So we were talking mainly about just the fridge interacting with the Internet, but it could also interact with the other appliances in your home, for example, your stove. So let's say that you have determined that you know, the fridge is suggested, Hey, you've got the

right ingredients here for a pot roast. Uh, And heck, you can even have a crock pot that has Internet connectivity, and so it starts the it starts the croc pot heating up at the right time so that you just all you do is dump them the radiance into it and you and you walk away, um or you have you wanna you wanna end up like baking something, and so it ends up sending that information to the oven when you're prepared, So that way, the oven starts to

preheat while you're actually getting your ingredients together, and you never had to go and turn anything on yourself. It's all controlled because the devices themselves are aware of what it is you're trying to do. So this is sort of the promise of the Internet of things in general. But you know what we're talking about appliance, is that the reason why we're talking about that is because those are things that exist on the market right now. The

same sort of thing is true for experiences. If you have say a smartphone, a tablet, and maybe even a video game console or set top box. Uh, you can have these sort of experiences right now within a separate

kind of network. So let's use Netflix as an example. Alright, Let's say have a Netflix account and I have access to a Netflix film or television show on my phone and I'm watching it, and then I stop, you know, I pause in the middle, and then a little bit later, I pick up my tablet and I watch a little bit more of it. It picks up right where it

left off, and then I pause. And then when I get home, I turn on my TV and my set top box that happens to have Netflix capability, and I start and it picks up again right where I left off. And so this is an experience that continues, and it doesn't matter what the context is. It follows me. It's context independent, so I don't have to worry about fast forwarding to get to the right section, so I can pick up where I left off. It's going to just

do that automatically. This is a really valuable experience to consumers, and it's the sort of thing that the Internet of Things really promises, is this idea of a seamless experience where you go from environment to environment and the environment adjusts to you and gives you the experience you want um based upon whatever your preferences are, and it may be that you have to express those preferences in a very um order way, and may in fact, I would

guess that the early early versions of this technology are going to require a lot of input on our part to be to work correctly. But future systems will have a lot of learning behaviors build into them so that based upon your behaviors in the past and the things that you've already done, they can anticipate what you want in the future and start to set things up so that they will be ideal for you before you even

are necessarily conscious of it. And UH and we're seeing some of that too, Like the Nest thermostat is a good example. So Nest thermostat is a programmable thermostat that has some learning algorithms in it that can, you know, based upon the way you adjust the thermostat throughout the day, can start to automatically make those adjustments for you. And you can also at any time going and manually change it either in the house or building yourself, or you

can even access it over the internet. So there are opportunity these there for other appliances that do similar things to to do that. And then we've got other UH possibilities as well. For example, that you you're watching TV and you see a product on television and you know you are the ultimate impulse buyer and you think I

want that. Well, with the Internet of Things, you can get to a point where and a lot of companies have been trying to do this, figure out a way where you can if you see something on the screen that you want, you can indicate I want that and then go and purchase it, uh, in a very easy, seamless way, so that you don't have to open up a tablet or or smartphone application or pop open a computer in order to say this thing I saw on TV, I want that. Make that mine. Um, yeah, my TV

provider already does that to some extent. Yeah, yeah, there's there's some of that built in. It's it's still not widespread and it's still not truly seamless, but it's getting better. And that's another thing where we expect to see. But when we talk about the Internet of Things, you have to think bigger than that. Like we're still talking appliances and and you know, entertainment centers and stuff, so radio's

TVs and computers and all that. But but this is really about putting computers and sensors and actuators in lots of things. Yeah, well, one of them, I would say one of the most mature Internet of things environments. Is the smart home where you've got uh, you know, your lights, your climate control, your garage door, um, your the locks on your front door. The sh leg Link system that you uh you wrote on that for the for the website. Yeah,

I'm not. Yeah, there's a you know, there's a a schleg Lock article I wrote and it was a few years ago about the system because it was something I saw at ce S where you could access the lock on your front door from the internet and from a smartphone you could unlock your door. So let's say that you have a repairman showing up at a certain time, you could, um, you can unlock the door for that person. You can also do things like set up pass codes,

temporary pass codes. They would only work within a certain block of time and outside of that they would no longer work. So that way, you could give a pass code to someone so that they could, you know, maybe walk your dogs or what are your plants or whatever it is, and then as soon as as soon as that time expand it is over, it'll just automatically lock again. So yeah, I mean, that's that's the sort of stuff

that you can see in a smart home. That and alarm systems things like that you can you can watch um uh it's easy to if you have the camera setup, you can see what's going on at your home. UM. If if you're like me and you go, did I turn on the alarm? Did I lock the door? You can do you can take care of it. You know, if you get down the road, you can pull over and get on your smartphone and make sure that you lock your door and make sure that you turn the

alarm on. UM and maybe the stove off, you know, those kinds of things. And that's something that that is already pretty well established in the market. Also, the smart meters that they've been putting in a lot of cities where um, they don't have to send out a meter reader to your to check your electricity. They can check that from AFAR. And what what's funny to me is that it didn't move quickly enough for Google and Microsoft,

who have now shut down their services. Well, I think that was mostly because the uh, the companies that installed the smart meters were not willing to share with Google and Microsoft um. And the two companies were just saying, you know what, if you guys aren't gonna help us out, We're gonna shut these down and we're not gonna mess with it anymore. But I think that will eventually come back. But cars to are are online in ways that they

hadn't been before. And and again, if we're talking about the future, you can imagine a system, a system where cars all have technology UH installed, whether it's retrofitted or just off the assembly line where UH there are there can be sensors like collision detection sensors and alarm systems. There can even be override systems where UH the you know,

we've seen this with like Google self driving cars. You can you can imagine that being incorporated into vehicles off the line where UM if you wanted to, you could engage it so that the car drives itself and because as these other UH sensors, it can navigate through traffic without there being a danger of a collision, especially if all the other cars are also on the same system. Then you've got a computer that can manage everything so that you get to where you're going in the most

efficient manner possible, which would be a huge relief. You know, theoretically you could avoid traffic jams because a lot of traffic jams depend upon human behavior and not necessarily something uh that's actually actively blocking the street, although that could happen too if there were if there were an incident where something was blocking the street, then obviously that would still be a problem, although a really robust system could

potentially navigate around that so that the the the impact would be minimal on traffic. Uh. And you could also see sensors being built into the infrastructure itself, so not just the cars, but in streets uh and in the you know, signs, things like that, so that it could uh there, the system itself could maintain how much traffic is going across it on a given day, help change

things like traffic light patterns. Um. So you're talking about a system that's much more flexible and can change on the fly, uh and possibly possibly helps cities like Atlanta with their horrible, horrible traffic problems. Atlanta's way up there, guys, Los Angeles, Atlanta. I mean, we're we're hurting and we we could we could use the help. So so I

had some statistics. Let me read you them. UM actually was if you if you're interested in reading more about the Internet of Things, I would also recommend um read right Web, which is one of my favorite tech sites anyway. But they have a whole section on Internet of things articles, UM, and uh they had one where they quoted statistics from the g s M A of All People. UM. This is an organization. Uh you might know from our other

podcasts about cell phones. UM. But they're studying how well connected things are because well, an Internet of things would be beneficial for them because they are the kinds of things that you would manage through a smartphone. So it's it's definitely something that they're interested in. UM. They said that, Uh, in twenty eleven, there were about nine billion devices connected to the Internet around the world. About six billion of them are are something that you can carry with you.

But by they expected uh, twenty four billion connected devices and about half of those would be mobile. UM. So it's definitely something that is that is growing exponentially. UM. But it's at the same time, it's it's one of those things that they're they're you know, as long as everything is working the way it's supposed to and people are behaving themselves, it's great because it can be real

time saving. UM. It can give you opportunities to to do other things with your time and with your money and really improve efficiency and turn things off that don't need to be powered on electricity. You could improve your quality of life to all kinds of people. Yeah, and uh so, yeah, there are a lot of potential benefits. I mean, and we're still not even finished with all

the possibilities. I mean, there could be sensors built into clothing should tell the clothing when it's dirty and when it needs to be washed, and it could well what would work great until you wash it and then you know short circuits. Well, yeah, you got you have to build in the right kind of fabrics so that you

can wash it. But we could get to a point where sensors are built into clothing so that when you put them in the washer, the washer detects from the sensors what kind of clothes they are and what kind of cycle it needs to go through. So then you get to a point where you know, you just need a robot to disrobe you and put it into the washer and other and then you don't have to do

anything else. Uh thank yeah, she needs a bonus. So the uh yeah, there's there are a lot of different things that could happen and and uh, you know, we're talking about a point where these sensors and these computer systems are pervasive. They need to be both pervasive and transparent. And by that, I mean for this system to be something that works seamlessly. You don't want to you don't want to see all the wires what I'm getting at so uh and and there are a lot of companies

working to kind of tackle that problem. Now, there is another major concern that arises out of this world of the future. Well, one of the concerns I was thinking of, and I think it's not the one that you're about to say, um, because I think the other one that you're about to say is bigger. But I mean it's um. Taking down the Internet at that point becomes a much bigger deal, because I mean you see that all the

time in UH, in corporate America. You know, everybody has a computer on their desk now, and then when something happens at the network, nobody gets anything done. And that's going to happen when everybody gets used to the Internet of things and suddenly there's a network outage or power outage. I can't cook, my fridge won't tell me what to make, and and yes it's a joke, but people. Once you get reliant on that technology, when there is a glitch or a network problem or something like that, it it

throws us off. Um and it could. You know, we've got all our traffic lights and everything, all our traffic systems online, and oh the power grid is overwhelmed and it shut down. Now the internet out grid. See when you have the smart grid than the power grid's fine? No, no, no, you're you're totally right. And and of course a lot of these systems, especially the ones that are related to infrastructure, would by necessity require redundant systems that are even if

they are the old preconnected systems, they would be necessary. So, for example, your smart grid traffic light system may revert back to a pre smart grid version so that it's still working. You know, it's still working, it's just not it's just not flexible like it used to be. Um or at least you get maybe the flashing red lights and hopefully people treated like a four was stop in Atlanta. That's a that's a hope that you make in Vain. I'm to the point now where I'm not flexible like

I used to be either. I can't even put on my own shoes anymore. Um, it also would be a tantalizing target for a terrorist. And I'm not just saying that because it's alliterative, but it's the kind of thing that that you know, what, if you're looking for a way to disrupt people's lives and cause panic, that could do it. Yeah, if you're Yeah. Part of the part of the defense of that is that the Internet is pretty darn robust and and there are a lot of

different ways of working around problems. But if you were able to find a way to, I don't know, inflict a a widespread virus that could uh could come up the works, and that could be enough to really make an impact. But you know, trying to actually take down the Internet in the sense of I want to target the Internet because everyone's connected to it and if I if I shut it down, then it's going to cause chaos. That's a huge endeavor. I mean, that's not something that's

easily done. But yeah. The other big concern, the major one that I think a lot of consumers should keep in mind, is privacy issues. So if you've got an Internet of things, you've got all these sensors around you, and you've and on you potentially um in the various

things that you're carrying or possibly even wearing. Well, then you could be you know, worried about your privacy because because the same systems that can make the environment so pleasant for us and to customize our experience in such a way that we have the best sort of uh experience possible. I mean, imagine walking through a building that automatically is adjusting to your preferences so that the lighting is just the way you would like it, and the

the ambient noise is just what you would want. That's that's a neat vision of the future. But it also means that there's a system that knows that you are there. They know when you're there, they know how long you're there, they know when you arrived, they know where you came from, they know where you went to. Because it's a if it's a big system that's keeping track of all of this, then it's keeping track of you. And as you move around and interact with the various environments around you, there

is a record there. You are leaving a digital footprint everywhere you go, and by necessity, that footprint has to be identified with you. On some level. It might be a superficial level, but it has to be identified with you because otherwise your experience isn't customized. That's the point of doing it. Yeah, the whole point of doing it is so that I Jonathan's trick Land as I walk around in my life experience the best sort of outcomes

possible considering my preferences. Well if they you know, if if nothing is connected to me, then there's no that all it's doing is tracking that there that that someone is moving around, but it doesn't know how to adjust you know, the settings were anything to make it ideal for me. So that's the tradeoff is do we go with this world where we have this custom experience to life?

This the sort of idea where we have truly manipulated our environment to the fullest extent possible so that every person is getting as ideal and experience as we can hope to achieve. But on the flip side, every single movement you make is essentially and every single thing you

do is essentially tracked. Now, there are a lot of different ways to approach this, where you build in security systems so that everything is encrypted, so that yes, everything is tracked, but it's not easy for anyone outside to see what you did win. But are big concerns. I mean, what if you happen to be in an area where a crime is committed and you don't even witness it. You're not you're not a witness to this crime. You were unaware that the crime had happened. And the crime

could be anything. Let's say it's robbery. So you happen to be in the same place at the same time as a robbery, but you're not in the exact same area, but but it's tracked you there, and then you happen to be late to something, so you make a faster than normal egress from the area in order to make your next appointment. And uh, it could very well be

the law enforcement when looking and reviewing records. If you're leaving a digital footprint that can be traced back to you could say, hey, this is a person of interest because look, they were there at this particular time and then they left in a real hurry at at the you know, shortly after the robbery took place. And then next thing you know, you're being hassled about something that

you had no knowledge of. Or let's say that you are doing something naughty, something that is frowned upon whether it's illegal or an ethical or whatever. Well, now you've got a record of it everywhere. So some of us who consider ourselves to be fairly ethical people might say, you know, I understand, but I don't really do anything terrible, so I don't see what that's a concern. Some people who are truly ethical people will be saying, this is an awful idea. I mean, whether I do anything wrong

is immaterial. I don't want there to be a system that tracks everything I do all the time. I want I want privacy in my life. And uh so that that is a huge hurdle. I mean, do we do we adopt this world in the future where we can have this kind of experience or do we shy away from it because we don't want to have a living record of everything we do every day until we're know

part of the environment as opposed to experiencing it. Yeah. Well, and and that's um you know, that's one of those conflicts that's difficult because the the um the benefits of some of this technology are pretty obvious, and you say, well, you know, I really like this stuff. I wish I could do that, but I'm just not comfortable with giving up my privacy. UM, I'm one of those people. UM. So yeah, I mean I could I could tell you from personal experience that it's not it's not a simple

question to answer. Um. A lot of these technologies are are things that we can implement without having to give up too much your privacy. Um. And then others you know, uh, you have to go, well, I'm gonna have to make a decision here one way or the other. Yeah, it's um, it's it's definitely an exciting time to see these developments take place. And I think, you know, we we are looking at possibilities, but we also have to remember where that, uh, this is not going to be a super fast transition,

and some stuff probably just won't work. Because you can build the best system in the world, but if people don't use it the way you thought they were going to use it, then it becomes a problem. And and that's one of the things is that it's hard to predict user behavior when you're first designing a system. I think a lot of people were very skeptical of smartphone apps when smartphones because a lot of smartphone apps that first came out were very much curiosities. They weren't necessarily

that useful. But now mobile apps that is, that is the thing. I mean, that's the huge craze in tech, right. I mean, we're seeing big companies scoop up small mobile app companies for billions of dollars because it's a big deal. So if the Internet of Things takes a route similar to the way smartphones and mobile technology and apps have, then it's definitely gonna become something pervasive and hopefully more

you full than problematic. But it's also possible that the first few implementations of this kind of technology could fall flat, that they just don't work the way they were anticipated to. And if it's if it's a big enough failure, it may mean that we don't see this Internet of things truly emerge because companies may shy away from it. Yeah. Well, I mean, like like I was saying earlier, I mean, there are some things that are already there, We're already

in the world. The thing is, there's I think it's going to end up being a situation where consumer demand drives a lot of things like the washer and dryer. That situation where you know, the washer wood communicated the dryer, Hey expect a load of permanent press it's coming. Um, you know that may not necessarily take off, you know, if it's at five option and people go, I don't

I'm not going to spend it on that. Now, having an email sent to you to tell you, hey, it's time to change the clothes over sticking in the in the dryer, um, now, that would be useful. So I think it's people are gonna say, why want that? But I don't mean this. It may also be one of those things where a lot of these features end up getting built into all models. Eventually, like it filters down so it no longer becomes like a premium model of

a particular appliance. It just becomes a standard feature that you find across all models of that appliance. And uh and in that case, um, you might end up slowly adopting it, but uh, there are other times where you might see companies just abandoned it. Another good example of

this is like three D television. You know, there's there are a lot of television sets out there that have three D built into them, but they're not necessarily um marketed as three D TV s. Well that that might be what we see in the future with these Internet connected appliances, that it's just one of the features of the appliance and it's not the selling feature, and that it's not necessarily priced higher because of it. Um, it's just one of the many things that comes with that

particular appliance. And the other thing that we'll have to have is some sort of universal standard of communication for this to truly work, or you're going to see third party companies pop up and their specialty is creating some sort of communication hub where different protocols can actually work

together with one another, at least on a superficial level. Uh. And so my point there is that if manufacturers don't start looking into ways where their technologies can talk to other companies technologies, a third party is going to find a way to make it happen, and then they're gonna just explode, you know, assuming that consumers care about it

at all. Anyway, all Right, Well, that wraps up our discussion about the Internet of Things and the possibilities that lie there in Uh, it'll be interesting to see this develop over time. I mean, you know, it's we're in the early stages already, and whether we progress much further really depends upon ingenuity and user behavior, so behave yourselves,

users and UH. If you have any topics you would like us to talk about in future episodes of tech Stuff, you can email us at tech stuff at the scurvery dot com or send us a message on Twitter or Facebook. Our handle at both of those is text Stuff H. S. W and Chris and I will help you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you