Our fridges and washing machines have started talking to our smartphones. The fridge sends us a text telling us we’ve run out of milk and to buy some on the way home. The washing machine lets us know that the laundry’s done. Welcome to the Internet of Things – the next step in interaction between our mobile devices and…well, just about anything you can think of, really. Our homes, cars and even objects on the street are chatting away to our smartphones. What will drive this trend forward are two complementary technologies. Near Field Communication (NFC) allows devices to engage in two-way data communication. Ultra-low power chips that can harvest energy from their environment (such as motion-sensitive watches or solar-powered mobiles) will result in a wealth of new technology throughout our environments.
Consumer-Driven Supercomputing
Also known as ‘Big Data’, this concept has developed out of the Cloud. But the latest developments in big data combine natural language processing that gives the consumer a real voice – as well as being just a little bit scary too. Big data gathers every piece of information you can think of about you as a person from your digital footprint. So your browsing history, your ‘likes’ on Facebook, the PPC adverts you click on – all of that goes into a huge database to build up a ‘picture’ of you, your likes, dislikes and, inevitably, your role as a consumer. The result is that advertising will be far more targeted to the individual, and we may eventually see the demise of generic advertising completely.
