Page 5 - To efficiency and beyond

FACTS AND FIGURES
TO EFFICIENCY AND BEYOND
Smart objects are all around us: they collect data from the environment and from our gestures, seamlessly connecting to other smart objects. They were first designed to make our lives more comfortable and efficient, now they are going to help us collaborate and communicate better.
Most experts agree on one main issue in the future; namely that the changes already brought into our lives by technology over the past two decades will be nothing compared to what will happen next.
We are at the beginning of a technological revolution triggered by the advent of the world wide web, which now promises to reconfigure the way we live and work yet again, with a new generation of interconnected devices, seizing data from the real world to shape a new kind of relationship between people, spaces and objects.
As a sort of convergence between the real and the virtual worlds, the Internet of Things (IoT), definition a phrase coined by Kevin Ashton in 1991, describes a “suite of technologies and applications that equip devices and locations to generate all kinds of information, to connect those devices and locations for instant data analysis and, ideally, activate smart actions2".
It represents an extended intelligence network which is embedded into objects such as smartphones, wearables, computers, cars, lamps, fridges, coffee machines - potentially every object around us.
Thanks to improvements in bandwidth, cloud computing, and the falling cost of sensors, something that was until recently largely confined to pioneering home automation projects or cutting-edge production is spreading into every facet of our lives.
In 2017, the number of “smart objects”, which work to make every human environment more intelligent, outnumbered the world’s population for the first time3.
Until recently, living things such as plants, animals and people were not part of this network of things. Now this tipping point is being extended as demonstrated by the italian city of Prato which is already experimenting with the use of trees as sensors in a new kind of smart city4.
Perhaps inevitably, an interconnected world of this kind is already experiencing a number of challenges and problems, mostly related to a number of privacy and security issues: but the opportunities presented by it outweigh them significantly. “The unparalleled combination of human and machine is driving collaboration in unprecedented ways,
90’s
WORLD WIDE WEB
ACCESS TO INFORMATION
CERN’s web browser software is released for public use .
00’s
WEB 2.0
PEOPLE TO PEOPLE
Skype launches – instantly connecting people around the world via video.
10’s
IOT + BIG DATA + CLOUD
BEYOND PEOPLE
The VR headset, Oculus Rift, becomes available to consumers.
FACTS AND FIGURES 5
Digital revolution: three phases of disintermediation
Data: The third revolution, 2016 http://www.thevan.it/la-terza- rivoluzione-digitale/