The Internet (and the Nature) of Things

This is a recent post by our managing director, @AgustinPelaezG, in response to Council‘s new years contest: “Panopticon as a metaphor of the Internet of Things – why not? But if it were the opposite?”:

In the quest for a more optimistic analogy for the Internet of Things, I suggest we take a look at nature. Our living world has been around for millions of years, a good reason to trust its efficiency and sustainability mechanisms. What can we learn from it?

Natural eco-systems are in fact good examples of communities that share information among their members in order to work properly. This can be analyzed from two different but complimentary perspectives:  first (1) at the individual entity level, where every element of the system shares and captures information to perform a given process, and second (2), at the macro level, where the cyclical nature of those processes helps keeping the balance of the system.

1. The Natural Information Network

An eco-system is a collection of living organisms (e.g. animals) that interact with “things” (e.g. plants, soil, trees) through a series of natural processes (e.g. photosynthesis or pollination) using scarce resources (e.g. water, oxygen, sunlight). Plants, for instance, use sunlight to turn CO₂ into oxygen, which is crucial for animals to live. They are able to do so because of their ability to sense their environment, growing towards the sun, absorbing the right nutrients and even communicating with other plants in order to prevent over-crowding or pests. Similarly, the process of pollination, which enables plant reproduction, occurs when flowers expose themselves through colors and scents, allowing bees to use their ultraviolet and odor sensors to detect their pollen and carry it around. These mechanisms work so well that even the slightest obstacle in the information-sharing process can threaten the whole community; studies have shown that smog and pollution are hindering bees’ ability to “augment reality”, making it harder to find pollen and fulfill their role in nature.

Nature as an analogy for the Internet of Things

Nature is wise and full of this kind of examples, but it wouldn’t be so without its built-in sensors. Ecosystems are sustainable because all of their components exchange information in forms of energy, which can be regarded as a natural information network that ensures an almost perfect orchestration between beings, processes and things.

The same way, the Internet of Things is about better orchestrating people, processes and things.  Our whole society could undergo a transformation if more information from our environment were used to better run every day processes, so much in industrial as in everyday scenarios.

2. Going in circles to keep the balance

A second viewpoint for this analogy is the fact that those natural processes are linked together in a cyclical way. This balance has kept our planet alive for millions of years and has only been threatened by modern civilization because of our consumption patterns [1]. We buy, use and dispose things that will never be reused. Furthermore most of those things are equipped with features that remain unused during the product life cycle, meaning that, although some value was created at a point of the production chain (e.g. an innovation in its design), it was destroyed by the end-user who didn’t perceive it. This is extremely inefficient.

The Internet of Things is supporting a fundamental change in how our economy works because it enables a trend called “Everything as a Service”. Cloud technologies and the proliferation of tiny sensors will allow companies to have a detailed traceability of a product during its entire lifecycle, being able to offer it on subscription basis, receiving real-time feedback about its usage, knowing exactly what customers like about it, and finally, taking responsible care of its disposal or recycling. This can help our planet make a better use of its scarce resources and find a better balance to keep it rolling for another million years.

A generic Product Life Cycle

These are my thoughts about a “City of Trust” where every entity fulfills a specific role within an eco-system, “exploiting its talents and realizing its dreams”, being that ultimate dream the system’s sustainability. With the Internet of Things we are giving back our planet its natural ability to capture information from its “things” and use it to keep a balance, after all, we are also part of nature.

[1] See Circular Economy initiative by http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/ and their video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCRKvDyyHmI

Panopticon as a metaphor of the Internet of Things – why not? But if it were the opposite?

The IoT Council proposed a new years contest to find an optimistic metaphor for the Internet of Things. It starts as follows:

Recently, the ‘Council on the Internet of Things’ website published an article in Chinese by Yongmou Liu, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Science and Technology, School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China, which is a warning against the danger of the Internet of Things becoming “a domineering tool”.

In the article, The Panopticon is used as a metaphor for describing a “surveillance society” where every individual is watched without being aware of it. In fact, Panopticon is a type of institutional building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched (s. Wikipedia). 

The contest’s guidelines are summarized as follows:

What could be the metaphor of a free society where individuals are endowed with the capability to exploit their talents and realise their dreams, where social groups stand together, and where organisations adopt an ethical conduct?

If we accept that Panopticon can be the metaphor for the surveillance society, the City of Control, the human enslaved by his objects, what could be the opposite concept for the freedom society, the City of Trust, the empowered individual?

The new bet on the Internet of Things

Ubidots was featured in an article from PulsoSocial, the leading publication and community in the area of technology, social media and entrepreneurship from Latin America.

The writer, Alan Colmenares, is an american consultant on Digital Innovation and has submitted articles to a number of newspapers and magazines, including VentureBeat. In our article, Alan has highlighted the growing interest on the Internet of Things, as well as Ubidots‘ performance during its launching year:

“According to research firm GSMA, the number of mobile connected devices in the world will grow from 6 billion today to 12 billion in 2020.  More importantly, the proliferation of these connected devices will create a $1.2 trillion opportunity.”

“…In addition to customers in the healthcare industry, a recent sale to an energy provider to petroleum services companies should increase the company’s current data stream volume by a factor of 10 and make ample use of the platform’s cloud infrastructure.  Even though the product is still in beta (early pilots), the firm’s sales pipeline continues to grow.”

PulsoSocial readers include the most influential latin american journalists, early adopters, bloggers, entrepreneurs, investors and web professionals. We hope you enjoy it!

Link to the article

Our IoT concept video

After launching Ubidots in 2011, we have received important feedback from all of you; we adjusted many things in our business model, added new exciting features to our platform and contributed to the IoT community in several ways.

As entrepreneurs, it is sometimes difficult to identify which ideas will improve your business in the long run, and which will probably deviate you from your initial vision.

This is why, after all the accepted feedback, it is cool to see how our fundamental dream remains the same, as can be seen in our concept video, made at the beginning of 2011. As the video says, we are helping companies interconnect their “unique universe” of “people, processes and things”.

Top 100 Thinkers tracking the Internet of Things in 2011

The Ubidots Team was ranked in place #67 among the Top 100 Thinkers tracking the Internet of Things.

Other important IoT trackers listed were Rob van Kranenburg (founder of the IoT Council and BricoLabs), Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (product & interaction designer), Iñaki Vásquez (Founder and CEO of Symplio), the WSN Blog Team, Cisco Team, IBM’s Smarter Planet Blog and the Read Write Web team.

Based in Seoul, South Korea, Postcapes is an organization whose goal is “to serve the need of those interested in learning or taking advantage of IOT technologies with timely news, resources, events, and education”. The ranking is based on a number of factors such as a public poll, how present the team/person is in public events/websites, and also a bit of personal subjectivity from the jury. For more information visit: www.postscapes.com

A cloud approach to the Internet of Things (IoT)

Ubidots is a platform for connecting wireless sensors to the cloud. It helps companies to see quicker benefits on their sensing projects, increasing their adoption of wireless sensors. This way, we are helping to build the Internet of Things (after all, interconnected sensors are the groundwork for it!).

Ubidots was indeed inspired by the concept of the Internet of Things. We share the idea of a greener, healthier and safer planet thanks to sensors. This is why we envisioned a tool that would be simple enough to speed up the creation of sensor networks all over the world, yet powerful enough to fit the widest variety of applications.

That vision has become a reality. During the past months we have been devoted to one thing: customer-centric product development. We have focused on our corporate users, asked for their opinions, understood their businesses, and reshaped our platform according to their constant feedback. The outcome: a proven platform delivered over the cloud to allow more companies, like yours, to replicate such success stories.

How can the IoT improve my business?

Perhaps our biggest finding has been that there really is a vast amount of data that companies ignore, which could significantly improve their businesses. Following the well-documented DIKW triangle, which is also referenced in IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative, we could say that such gap hinders the creation of company’s knowledge and the support of business decisions. The figure below shows how we understand the traditional DIKW approach in the corporate setting and how sensors help spread the information base of your company:

This is our fundamental explanation of the role of sensors in business. Now, let’s put it into more detailed stories: how do you think sensors can boost your company?