Our world will soon be populated with trillions of machines.
David Clark, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who helped develop the internet, believes that in 15 or 20 years’ time the network will need to accommodate a trillion devices.
A million seconds equals 11.5 days, a billion seconds is 32 years and a trillion is 32,000 years.
These ideas have been floating around for years, variously known as “ubiquitous computing”, “embedded networking” and “the pervasive internet”. The phenomenon “could well dwarf previous milestones in the information revolution”, according to a 2001 report entitled “Embedded, Everywhere” by America’s National Research Council, part of the respected National Academy of Sciences. A report by a United Nations agency in 2005 called it “The Internet of Things”. More at the Economist.
It’s beginning now.
Popular Mechanics: “everything that could benefit from a microchip inside will have a microchip inside”.
Machine communication will become part of the fabric of life.
Several years ago I was developing uses for systems based at Cybersensor, Inc. Now defunct even after a fast rise to Wall Street, for a short time the firm promised to introduce a simple, low-cost, internet-enabled wireless communications for companies seeking monitoring and control of diverse types of equipment or systems. “There’s a whole ecosystem of hardware, software and service guys springing up.” (New York Times 26 Jul 2004)
New Daedalus, a new blog about ‘intelligent architecture”, is asking What if you owned an intelligent building? For business parks in the San Francisco area, I promoted intelligent building systems in the early 1980s. Calling it ‘smartitecture’ under my Telestrategic Consulting firm, seminars introduced developers to time- and service-controlled buildings, including security, facilities and utilities management, of course, but also private telecom, tenant data and office services.
Buildings, roads, farms and animals, our homes and cars, i.d. tags in our dry cleaning? We are entering another revolution – in controllers.