Your comment reminds me of how people first looked at blogging, twitter, youtube, and many other technologies.
I agree that the examples we are usually given are not massively impressive, but neither is the ability to post info, or share your videos online.
I think IoT has been oversold in many ways for the short-term, exactly as you are pointing out. But in the long-term, I think it will be very impressive.
For example, my fridge knowing that I'm out of milk and reminding me to buy some. Sure, that's a pretty useless case. But what happens when we aggregate that over a large population and then we connect that with the grocers and dairies. Will we have JIT milk processing and production, saving significant energy and resources?
We just went from a very big 'so what' to potentially having a significant impact on the environment.
What troubles me more is not IoT, but the storytelling. It has been years people from this segment come out boring, meaningless videos, talks, articles usually feature microwave, doors, windows. Steve Jobs sold iPhone with 3 functions in hours. Yet after billions spent and thousands of smart minds working for years, we still have this?
I'm not sure if IoT has potential in long term. The most important thing about internet is it connects people, minds, creativity, imagination and consumers' pockets. I think as an industry we have too many more important and meaningful works to do, directly with people. I'm willing to bet that a well thought, carefully made video on youtube will make more positive impact on environment that the whole IoT segment combined today. If so, why bother?
If IoT really has potential, at this point it's very badly executed.
I agree that the examples we are usually given are not massively impressive, but neither is the ability to post info, or share your videos online.
I think IoT has been oversold in many ways for the short-term, exactly as you are pointing out. But in the long-term, I think it will be very impressive.
For example, my fridge knowing that I'm out of milk and reminding me to buy some. Sure, that's a pretty useless case. But what happens when we aggregate that over a large population and then we connect that with the grocers and dairies. Will we have JIT milk processing and production, saving significant energy and resources?
We just went from a very big 'so what' to potentially having a significant impact on the environment.