The three letter acronym IoT is a little bit like, I love you, it means different things to different people. I love my dog, I love my car, I love my wife, I love my children, but they are all different degrees of the same word. Internet of Things is a marketing phrase and is a little bit like the cloud, which was invented by IBM.
The Internet of Things means one inanimate device, being able to talk to another inanimate device without human intervention.
In its most basic sense, it's your fridge talking to Safeway or talking to the grower. It knows your sausages and all your eggs have gone past their sell-by-date because it knows when you put them in, so it's adding them to your shopping list, which you access on your phone while you are in Safeway. It's as simple as that.
IoT has been around for a long time, the first manifestation of this was machine to machine learning where one machine knows what the other machine wants to do, like a computer and a printer. Today, the IoT process generates a huge amount of data, which is of more value to the end user and the corporation than it is to the device. The collection of huge amounts of data being collected from these inanimate devices is providing them with the ability to generate artificial intelligence. Connected devices will use the data to say, "I've seen this before, I'm not going to do it again." or "I haven't seen this before, therefore, I'm going to alert somebody and let them know I've seen it."
IoT means inanimate devices are connected to the internet. That's all it means. It is a light bulb, a fridge, a car, or a train, which is connected to the internet. On the other end, is a graphical user interface, a dashboard, or a computer, which somebody is looking at, to understand what is going on with the device to determine if everything is working beautifully.
Nicholas Jeffery, a Vancouver based Smart City Expert, contributes regularly to IoT Economist. Nicholas pivoted in the new millennia to bring his business acumen and strategic thinking to bear in the technology, media and telecommunications markets, helping companies flesh out their growth strategies, business development and sales operations.