Computers, everywhere (and nowhere) all at once: The cloud, smart home, voice, and ambient computing

The Internet of Things (IoT) is another one of those tech terms that has long been thrown about but is rapidly finding its way into everyday life. It’s kind of like that Hemingway quote about how one goes bankrupt: gradually, then suddenly.  Let’s get started, first with these two not-amazing-but-pretty-helpful-especially-if-you-watch-them-sped-up 1 videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSIPNhOiMoE

Required readings:

Mostly an infographic, kind of a non-video version of the videos above. Two quick quotes about the astounding pace of IoT growth:

• “Our IoT world is growing at a breathtaking pace, from 2 billion objects in 2006 to a projected 200 billion by 2020. That will be around 26 smart objects for every human being on Earth!”
• “By 2025, the total global worth of IoT technology could be as much as USD 6.2 trillion—most of that value from devices in health care (USD 2.5 trillion) and manufacturing (USD 2.3 trillion).”

Can you believe it? Our last Wikipedia reading for the class! Let’s not get all sentimental. Instead, let’s get straight to business:

• As usual, a solid top-level definition: “The internet of things (IoT) is the network of physical devices, vehicles, buildings and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data. In 2013 the Global Standards Initiative on Internet of Things (IoT-GSI) defined the IoT as “the infrastructure of the information society.” The IoT allows objects to be sensed and controlled remotely across existing network infrastructure, creating opportunities for more direct integration of the physical world into computer-based systems, and resulting in improved efficiency, accuracy and economic benefit.”
• Wikipedia’s sources are a bit more pessimistic than Intel about IoT device growth, pegging its 2020 estimate at between 20 billion (Gartner) and 50 billion (Cisco). Maybe Intel needs to calm down a bit?
• RFID (radio-frequency identification) is a fascinating bit of the IoT ecosystem. Be sure to read about it until you understand the basics well.
• “The concept of a network of smart devices was discussed as early as 1982, with a modified Coke machine at Carnegie Mellon University becoming the first internet-connected appliance, able to report its inventory and whether newly loaded drinks were cold.” Coke has continued its technology leadership—today’s Freestyle machines are pretty fascinating from an IoT perspective.
• Continuing a trend we’ve seen in this course, the “Applications” section of this article is fascinating reading.
• The “Technology Roadmap” in the “Trends and Characteristics” section is worth a close look. We’re pretty well on target with this chart created in 2008. 2
• The “basket of remotes” section underlines just how essential developing and agreeing on standards will be for the large-scale success of the IoT.
• The “Enabling technologies for the IOT” section is a pretty good read if you want to get a sense of the vocabulary IoT nerds use when arguing with each other.
• Perhaps even more so than for other articles, the “Criticisms and controversies” section is worth a read since IoT system issues affect the physical world around us. Think about a service outage keeping an IoT-enabled baby monitor from functioning for just one example.
• Though not included in this article, I absolutely love the term “the Internet of Heavier Things” to refer to industrial-scale deployment (e.g. in manufacturing, energy) of IoT devices.

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Words on / reading time for this page: 750 words / 4-5 minutes

Words in / reading time for required readings: 11,055 words / 56-63 minutes

Total words in / reading time for this lesson: 11,805 words / 60-68 minutes

The Cloud

Let’s start here:

It’s true! Well, mostly. It’s a bunch of other computers working together in a complicated way, but yeah, that’s the basic idea.

Let’s dive in.

Required readings

A fun infographic highlighting some of the key dates / events in the evolution of cloud computing. Probably a good idea to go back through this graphic again after you’ve read everything else here. A few dates of particular important:

• Salesforce.com launching in 1999 really marked the advent of the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, a key offering of cloud computing.
• The launch of Amazon Web Services3 in 2006 made cloud computing to a dramatically larger audience.
• Apple’s iCloud service launches, further cementing the cloud’s place in the general public’s tech vocabulary.

A great way to ease into what’s admittedly a fairly technical topic even for this class. As you’re thinking through this concept of “networks of servers”, this map of data centers showing where “the cloud” is actually located might help:

I know, I know. Another topic, another Wikipedia article, right? But—they’re really so very good for general overviews of broad topics!4 Things to note:

• You need to be able to understand (at least fairly well) every word of this introductory paragraph:

Cloud computing is a kind of Internet-based computing that provides shared processing resources and data to computers and other devices on demand. It is a model for enabling ubiquitous, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services),^[1][2] which can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort. Cloud computing and storage solutions provide users and enterprises with various capabilities to store and process their data in third-party data centers.^[3] It relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economy of scale, similar to a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network.

• The discussion of the origin of the term “cloud” is pretty fun, in a nerdy way.
• The concept of distributed access to pooled computing resources and data arose in the early days of computer networks (along with ARPANET), but it took many decades for the necessary infrastructure to develop.
• Spend a good bit of time familiarizing yourself with the “Characteristics” section—this does a pretty solid job of explaining why the cloud has succeeded.
• Also spend some time understanding the various service models (Saas, PaaS, and IaaS). To understand these well 5, you’ll have had to have paid pretty good attention to “What is Code?”. This graphic may help:

• Don’t worry too terribly much about the “Deployment models” section.

Unless this piece particularly interests you, you can skim through it until you get to the section called “The Skeptics’ Concerns”. This section is why I included the article—it gives you a good dose of reality to counterbalance all the “the cloud is amazing!” sentiment present in some of our other readings.

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Words on / reading time for this page: 1,093 words / 6-8 minutes

Words in / reading time for required readings: 19,115 words / 98-109 minutes

Total words in / reading time for this lesson: 20,294 words / 104-117 minutes