The Internet of Broken Things (Or, why am I so cold?)
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/08/the-internet-of-broken-things-or-why-am-i-so-cold/
Like anything else, there's a spectrum of usefulness to IoT.
Watching The Expanse, the other day (which is not a bad show, by
the way), I noticed that if you had the right IoT lights, you
could run an app that would change your lighting to suit the
show in real-time. I don't have those lights, but I suppose when
the action moves to a dark sub-basement, your lights dim and
when you are in a space ship's reactor room, they turn red, and
so on. Fun, but hardly useful or life-changing. On the other
hand, there are some very practical IoT items like the Nest
thermostat. It might seem lazy to want to monitor and control
your thermostat from your tablet, but if you are frequently away
from home, or you have multiple houses, it can be a real
positive to be able to control things remotely. With the recent
blizzard on the U.S. east coast, for example, it would be great
to turn on the heat in your weekend cottage 150 miles away while
you were still at work or home. However, the Nest recently had
a hiccup during an upgrade and it has made many of their
customers mad (and cold). I'll get back to that, in a minute.
First, I want to talk about the problems with deploying
something that will be in many varied environments (like
people's homes) that controls something real.
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently
doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone.
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