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We are already entering the fourth-generation internet, the internet of things, but it won’t really take off until the next decade, the 2020s. Sure, we have self-driving Teslas and Nest home appliances, along with Samsung’s Smart Things, but it’s not mainstream yet. For example, none of my friends has a self-driving car yet.This will change though, and it’s not just things on the internet, but a whole raft of technologies from robotics to artificial intelligence to machine learning, combined with IoT that will make it happen. These technologies are playing into every aspect of our lives, from street lighting to gene editing, and is transforming our world into a connected smart structure.The idea is that you can place a chip inside anything and make it smart. Smart roads, smart buildings, smart cities, smarter people. In the next decade of the internet, a number of key developments will come into play to start building the semantic web or web 5.0.In other words, whether we consciously know this or not, we are building a smart planet where everyone and everything is connected and communicating non-stop. How many things are connected in this future planet?There are various estimates.Research house IHS Markit estimate 78 billion things communicating by 2025.
McKinsey say this will be a multi-trillion dollar market that, after the mobile internet and artificial intelligence, will be the most impactful technologies for the next decade.
And, if you like that sort of thing, Forbes do an annual roundup of what the research firms are thinking about IoT, including other headline grabbers like:Bain predicts that by 2020 annual revenues could exceed $470B for the IoT vendors selling the hardware, software and comprehensive solutions; andGeneral Electric predicts investment in the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to top $60 trillion during the next 15 years.This is big.In my own mind, I’m just thinking that I’ll have a TV, car, fridge, heating system, desktop or tablet or both, mobile and watch, health monitor possibly swallowed and inside me, robot to look after the house, security system, dog, children and automated personal assistant all on the net. That’s 15 things on the net just for me. Then my wife and kids will have a few things, probably at least 5 each. So, in a typical household in a developed economy, there will be an average 30 things on the internet. Bearing in mind we are in a developed economy, there will be smart governments who will roll out a further average 5 things on the net per person, e.g. security monitors, car sensors on the roads, automated toll systems, tracking services and such like.My household of four people has just added another 20 things to the internet, thanks to the government. So, we’re looking at a minimum 10 things per person in a developed economy online.In developing economies and in countries where some of the society are excluded or have less inclusion, there will still be a lot of things on the internet supporting them. Definitely a mobile device, but equally government monitoring systems and smarter infrastructure. For the purposes of this blog entry, I am going to be conservative and estimate that two-thirds of Earth’s population which, by 2025, will have risen to 8 billion people. Let’s say that the United Nations are on track to increase inclusion by that time – it is one of their sustainable goals – and only half the planet are in poorer conditions, compared to two-thirds today, and you have four billion people with an average of five things on the internet monitoring their activities, and four billion with ten things, of which five are for their lifestyle and five are for the government.That’s a minimum of sixty billion things on the internet, and these things are communicating non-stop. The fact they are communicating means they have intel inside, and that means they can transact. If sixty billion things are trading and transacting non-stop, 24 by 7, you’re talking trillions of transactions. It wouldn’t surprise me in fact, that there may be billions of things transacting trillions of times a minute in very small amounts, all day long.
McKinsey say this will be a multi-trillion dollar market that, after the mobile internet and artificial intelligence, will be the most impactful technologies for the next decade.And, if you like that sort of thing, Forbes do an annual roundup of what the research firms are thinking about IoT, including other headline grabbers like:Bain predicts that by 2020 annual revenues could exceed $470B for the IoT vendors selling the hardware, software and comprehensive solutions; andGeneral Electric predicts investment in the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to top $60 trillion during the next 15 years.This is big.In my own mind, I’m just thinking that I’ll have a TV, car, fridge, heating system, desktop or tablet or both, mobile and watch, health monitor possibly swallowed and inside me, robot to look after the house, security system, dog, children and automated personal assistant all on the net. That’s 15 things on the net just for me. Then my wife and kids will have a few things, probably at least 5 each. So, in a typical household in a developed economy, there will be an average 30 things on the internet. Bearing in mind we are in a developed economy, there will be smart governments who will roll out a further average 5 things on the net per person, e.g. security monitors, car sensors on the roads, automated toll systems, tracking services and such like.My household of four people has just added another 20 things to the internet, thanks to the government. So, we’re looking at a minimum 10 things per person in a developed economy online.In developing economies and in countries where some of the society are excluded or have less inclusion, there will still be a lot of things on the internet supporting them. Definitely a mobile device, but equally government monitoring systems and smarter infrastructure. For the purposes of this blog entry, I am going to be conservative and estimate that two-thirds of Earth’s population which, by 2025, will have risen to 8 billion people. Let’s say that the United Nations are on track to increase inclusion by that time – it is one of their sustainable goals – and only half the planet are in poorer conditions, compared to two-thirds today, and you have four billion people with an average of five things on the internet monitoring their activities, and four billion with ten things, of which five are for their lifestyle and five are for the government.That’s a minimum of sixty billion things on the internet, and these things are communicating non-stop. The fact they are communicating means they have intel inside, and that means they can transact. If sixty billion things are trading and transacting non-stop, 24 by 7, you’re talking trillions of transactions. It wouldn’t surprise me in fact, that there may be billions of things transacting trillions of times a minute in very small amounts, all day long.