This latest three-letter acronym really captures the imagination. Just about everything will be digitally interconnected to everything else that is digital. Theoretically, your refrigerator will tell you what is spoiling and remind you what might be getting a bit old in the freezer. Your phone of course will become your personal servant issuing orders or taking requests for just about everything in the home. And all along, you can of course be sure that the government is simply ignoring all this information. After all, we do insist on our privacy … but let’s leave that alone and the subject of another blog.
Here is my latest thought about this concept. The keyboard as you now know it may become a buggy whip. Take a look at this upstart (a company called CICRET)
I suspect the concept we currently hold dear using a phone may be gone shortly. What a silly idea to carry that around; worry about where it is, etc. There is now a whole array of almost holographic presentation formats. Watch the Ironman movies carefully. This is not far off.
Of course, the reason we will tolerate this digital intrusion is that our lives will be somehow made easier, simpler, and perhaps less expensive. Our cars are about to drive themselves. Our electric vehicles will call us to tell us they are ready to get us to the next destination. My son starts his car to warm it up remotely on cold winter mornings and I can tell if he ever exceeds a speed limit. There is no point in anyone stealing the car. I can shut it down and alert the police about its whereabouts. And, this car is less than $20k brand new.
Meanwhile the utility industry keeps thinking customers are captive and uninterested in energy issues. What will it take to upend that world? Jawbone is keeping track of your personal fitness and is now talking to the NEST about your comfort. It seems like our technologies haven’t heard about our disinterest. It seems like they may be conspiring to upend the business.
Maybe this is because all these technologies just don’t bother talking to the energy utilities. Maybe these free market companies simply do not believe utilities are relevant to this evolutionary movement.
Abraham Lincoln was right of course. Things may come to those who wait, but only those things left by those who hustle.