Some people are better at it than others, but it is widely known that the human being is able to feel a connection with inanimate objects. This ranges from being attached to your favorite sofa to feeling a deep love for your coffee machine. Nowadays it is getting easier to connect with non-living objects because of a technology that is still emerging. The Internet of Things (IoT) makes it easier to get into contact with objects and systems, but most of all it is enhancing the interaction between the inanimate objects .
In 2021, the expectation is that in total a number of 35.82 billion IoT devices will be installed and the prediction is that it will keep growing in the upcoming years (findstack, 2020). IoT causes a lot of positive changes in the way we live at our homes, but also in factories and at the office. Right now, we can see that production processes are becoming more efficient everyday and that our homes are already quite smart. What the future will look like with the development of IoT can only be speculated about. Especially in the office it might cause radical changes in the way we work together. If the connected devices will be communicating with each other, communicating and sharing information with colleagues could happen less often manually.
Despite the fact that IoT has many advantages, the technology still keeps raising questions about ethical issues. The amount of data that will be gathered about you is enormous. All the different devices are keeping track of our behaviour and trying to perform better. Privacy is an issue, sure, but we say that and at the same time we don’t really undertake any action to secure our privacy. Perhaps it is true that we find our privacy not that important after all? In that case it might be better to just give IoT all the space that it needs, so it can be developed properly. Then we can embrace the possibility to really give our chair the appreciation that it deserves.
References
findstack.com. (2020). 21+ Internet of Things Statistics, Facts & Trends for 2021. [online] Available at: https://findstack.com/internet-of-things-statistics/.
Softwaretestinghelp.com. (2019). 18 Most Popular IoT Devices in 2019 (Only Noteworthy IoT Products). [online] Available at: https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/iot-devices/.
