IoT: The good and the bad
The internet of things , better known as iot, is a phenomenon that is set to change the world. The internet of things refers to the network of various items embedded with unique identifiers (UID) allowing these things to exchange and transfer data. The items in question can refer to any physical device, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals, or even people. The embedded software allows these items to sense, collect, transfer, and output data to increase efficiency.
The internet of things intends to make the customer lifestyle easier, safer, more efficient, and cheaper in the long run. One great advantage of iot is the convenience it provides in everyday life. For example, the device can keep track of the expiration date of all the products at home and alert you before you consume it. Moreover, it will notify you of any product that is about finish, helping you assemble your grocery list. Patient monitoring is another great benefit from iot. A rise in the patients heart beat is detected by the sensor in the device which alerts the doctor who can immediately dispatch an EMT to the patient’s house. This course of action can possibly save the patient from a heart attack. Apart from saving a tremendous amount of time, IOT serves to save money by being cheap in the long run. Safety is another factor that makes iot a success. An burglar alarm system can alert the police personnel in your area, saving you the trouble of being robbed.
However, like every other technological innovation, iot comes with some drawbacks. The complex network of iot can be a problem in case of any bugs or system failures. You can possibly lose important data saved in your devices. The biggest and most feared disadvantage is the privacy of the user being compromised. For example, these devices know your sleeping pattern, your eating habits, your location etc. This information is at a risk of getting into wrong hands. Additionally , iot can make the consumer lazy. From waking up to to the moment you go back to sleep, iot can control your life. Simple tasks such as turning the lights on when you wake up are performed by electronic devices. This technology threatens to take control of the consumers’s life making him/her inactive and more prone to health issues.
Discussing on an economical scale, IOT poses a threat to employment rate. Technology is taking over manual jobs leaving people jobless.
The internet of things, being time, money, and energy efficient, is a huge advantage to the human lifestyle. However, safety issues sometimes prevent it from being a wide consumer choice.
2 comments on “IoT: The good and the bad”
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Zareen,
Good exposition of pros and cons of IoT technology. As in any technology evolution, there has always been bad and good, but we should also work on educating the users on how to better use these new technologies and also protect themselves regarding the security aspect. You pointed out how these IoT devices are taking over our daily easy tasks which could make us lazy, but my point to that is for us users, to make better use of that “free” time for over good purpose.
Great article!
I have always been pretty skeptical of IoT technology. In my opinion, I never really understood the hype around it. People give examples of applications of IoT such as smart lights, automatically brewing coffee, and like you mentioned, tracking the expiration dates of products at home. But all those examples given seemed like very simple tasks that we could do for ourselves. Would relying too much on smart homes and IoT tech turn us into mindless zombies?
In addition, the issue of privacy is also an important one. I feel like the more tech is being connected and incorporated into our homes, the more likely it is for something to get hacked. And the thought of someone random out there knowing about my habits and actions at home is just too creepy for me to be willing to deal with in return for a little bit of convenience. After all, can we really create a device that is completely unhackable??