The role of Internet of Things (IoT) as a network of physical objects and devices (mechanical and digital machines) with unique identifiers (UIDs) that communicate and interact with each other via an internet connection without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction is quite critical. This technology allows devices to become integrated and increase business efficiency in various sectors, helping people on their daily activities.
According to IBM, before there were Internet-connected umbrellas and juicers, water bottles and factories, there was a humble Coke machine in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that could report its contents through a network. It was the world’s first IoT device.
Particularly, in the early 1980s, David Nichols, a graduate student in Carnegie Mellon University’s computer science department, was in his office on campus at Wean Hall craving a soda, when he had an incredible idea, at the time. His idea to track the Coke machine’s contents remotely influenced two other students, Mike Kazar and Ivor Durham, and a research engineer at the university, John Zsarnay, who began working alongside him to make it happen.
The implementation of the idea was simple. The key to determining the contents of the Coke machine from afar was keeping close tabs on its lights. The machine had six columns of glass soda bottles. When someone purchased a Coke, a red indicator light for the corresponding column would flash for a few seconds before turning back off. When a column was empty, the light stayed on until the sodas were replaced.
To pull data from the machine, Zsarnay installed a board that sensed the status of each of the indicator lights. A line from the board ran to a gateway for the department’s main computer, which was connected to the ARPANET, a precursor to today’s Internet, which, at the time, served less than 300 computers worldwide.
Kazar wrote a program for the gateway that checked the status of each column’s light a few times per second. If a light transitioned from off to on but then went off again a few seconds later, it knew that a Coke had been purchased. If the light stayed on more than five seconds, it assumed the column was empty. When the light went back off, the program knew that two cold Cokes -which were always held in the machine in reserve- were now available for purchase, while the rest of the bottles were still warm.
Today, Internet applications and market demands are transforming many sectors including the creation of smart management systems, control of business and home appliances remotely, general remote monitoring of assets, tracking health issues effectively with real-time feedback using wearable technologies, enhanced communication in logistics by connecting all elements in a supply chain, monitoring inventory and of production flow, mapping virtually a plethora of digital data to generate insights, and vehicle-to-vehicle communication.
To sum up, IoT is important for our future, while we must secure safe data use and concrete rules on data exploitation. We must know who can hear our private conversations via a smartphone microphone, even when we think that it is not in use, or motion sensors must strictly be part of a general framework of rules on gathered data. Furthermore, IoT will add over one trillion dollars to the global economy by 2025, thus it is time to pay additional attention on IoT development.
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