CITIES will become bigger in the future, it has been predicted. But no one is sure whether they will become safer or not.
Notwithstanding that, many companies are already staking their future in the “Internet of Things” (IOT) technologies, which in simple terms is all about installing and using sensors that are connected to machines.
Technically, since both sides of the equation are considered as machines, the terminology used is “machine to machine” or M2M for short. Although that may sound like a one-to-one relationship, that is not really the case because it is more of a relationship between networks, and there are always servers in between.
For those who have not caught on to these technical terms, IOT is actually a relative term, i.e. it is relative to the term “Internet of People” (IOP). The theory behind this is that IOP is already a “done thing”, meaning to say that there is not much to do anymore when it comes to the interconnection of “people”, therefore the new challenge now is how to interconnect “things”.
However, this appears to be just a matter of semantics, because it is still “people” who are causing the interconnection of “things”, and that “people” are ultimately the direct or the indirect beneficiaries of whatever it is that these “things” could do while these are interconnected.
As of now, many Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies have already developed their “Safe Cities” frameworks. Although that might sound like a really big thing, what is really behind that are the little things in the form of sensors that would be embedded all over the cities, all of them either feeding data to several servers or sending instructions to all kinds of machines situated in the fields, the streets, the homes and the buildings, among others.
As it is in the case of IOP, the internet is a “network of networks” and that is still how it is going to be in the case of IOT. The bottom line here is that IOT will merely supplement IOP, and not supplant it.
To a large extent, it could be said that “Safe Cities” is actually an understatement, because ICT in general and IOT in particular could do more than just keeping cities safe. Generally speaking, it could be said that these technologies could also make cities more efficient in its overall operations, and more effective at that. In simpler language, it could make everything better, if not cheaper.
Just to clarify, not all of ICT uses IOT, but all of IOT uses ICT. IOT does not have a “world” of its own inside the internet, because would have to use the internet cloud.
On the other hand, it is already certain that IOT is going to be the most active contributor to Big Data inside the internet. Outside the internet however, IOT could have a “world” of its own, having its own non-telco frequencies. (To be continued)/PN
