Tech Trends in Practice

TREND 2Internet of Things and the Rise of Smart Devices

The One-Sentence Definition

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the increasing number of everyday devices and objects that are connected to the internet and are capable of gathering and transmitting data.

What Is the Internet of Things?

The rise of smart devices has played a key role in the massive explosion of data (see Big Data, Trend 4) – and is rapidly changing our world and the way we live in it. But, in the IoT, data is created by things, not people, which has given rise to the term “machine-generated data.” How exactly are machines generating data? Typically, it’s when smart devices, gadgets, or machines gather information and communicate that data via the internet – an example being your fitness tracker automatically sending activity data to an app on your phone. (However, as we’ll see later in this section, in the future, devices will increasingly process the data themselves, without having to transmit it for analysis.)

This is all possible because, these days, pretty much everything is getting smarter. It all started with the iPhone, and has since snowballed to include smart TVs, smart watches, and fitness trackers (see wearables, Trend 3), smart home thermostats, smart fridges, smart industrial machinery…even smart nappies that alert you when your baby has, well, done what babies do best. A huge range of devices, machines, and equipment are now fitted with sensors and have the ability to constantly gather ...