JCL Blog

Getting to the Future

Last year the Microsoft Office team produced a video showing their vision for the future.  It is pretty cool.

Technology companies produce mountains of these aspirational works -- probably mostly to inspire their own people to get motivated and build the stuff.  I still remember this video Apple showed in the 90s.

Dr. Francis Colins said:  

The First Law of Technology says we invariably overestimate the short-term impact of a truly transformational discovery, while underestimating its longer-term effects. 

At the time he was talking about he the human genome sequencing project, but it applies to all technological advances.  We always want the future to get here sooner and we often are dejected, or at least frustrated, by the time it actually arrives.  But arrive it finally does and we only have to look at the amazing things around us to confirm Dr. Collins' first law.

The buzz about the Internet of Things is roaring and we are not so much talking about how refrigerators are going to be on the internet, but an avalanche of billions and billions of sensors reporting everything from the proximity of cars to each other to advances in industrial automation.

China is doing its top down thing in an effort to lead in the industry.  They just concluded their third Internet of Things Conference this last weekend.  The EU has gotten underway with an initiative to establish standards and information sharing with their own IOT web site.

Here in the US it does not appear that there is a governmental initiative, but plenty of companies are working on building the tools we will need to make the most of the concept.  IBM was probably first with its Smarter Planet initiative, now in its 4th year.  Microsoft has StreamInsight, Oracle has its initiative, and there are many others.

It took the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 before people could visualize a world with billions of little computers in people's pockets.  There had been smart phones before, there had been PDAs, but for some reason the iPhone showed us the way.

What is going to be the thing or event that breaks through and enables everyone to visualize the Internet of Things revolution?

What is going to get us to that future?