The Internet of Things: The Promise Versus the Tower of Hacked Babbling Things

The term “Internet of Things”  (IoT) is being loosely tossed around in the media.  But what does it mean? It means simply that data communication, like Internet communication, but not necessarily Internet Protocol packets, is emerging for all manner of “things” in the home, in your car, everywhere: light switches, lighting devices, thermostats, door locks, window shades, kitchen appliances, washers & dryers, home audio and video equipment, even pet food dispensers. You get the idea. It has also been called home automation. All of this communication occurs autonomously, without human intervention. The communication can be between and among these devices, so called machine to machine or M2M communication.  The data communication can also terminate in a compute server where the information can be acted on automatically, or made available to the user to intervene remotely from their smart mobile phone or any other remote Internet connected device.

Another key concept is the promise of automated energy efficiency, with the introduction of “smart meters” with data communication capability, and also achieved in large commercial structures via the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design program or LEED.  Some may recall that when Bill Gates built his multi-million dollar mansion on Lake Washington in Seattle, he had “remote control” of his home built into it.  Now, years later, Gates’ original home automation is obsolete.  The dream of home automation has been around for years, with numerous Silicon Valley conferences, and failed startups over the years, and needless to say, home automation went nowhere. But it is this concept of effortless home automation that has been the Holy Grail.

But this is also where the glowing promise of The Internet of Things (IoT) begins to morph into a giant “hairball.”  The term “hairball” was former Sun Microsystems CEO, Scott McNealy‘s favorite term to describe a complicated mess.  In hindsight, the early euphoric days of home automation were plagued by the lack of “convergence.”  I use this term to describe the inability of available technology to meet the market opportunity.  Without convergence there can be no market opportunity beyond early adopter techno geeks. Today, the convergence problem has finally been eliminated. Moore’s Law and advances in data communication have swept away the convergence problem. But for many years the home automation market was stalled.

Also, as more Internet-connected devices emerged it became apparent that these devices and apps were a hacker’s paradise.  The concept of IoT was being implemented in very naive and immature ways and lacking common industry standards on basic issues: the kinds of things that the IETF and IEEE are famous for.  These vulnerabilities are only now very slowly being resolved, but still in a fragmented ad hoc manner. The central problem has not been addressed due to classic proprietary “not invented here” mindsets.

The problem that is currently the center of this hairball, and from all indications is not likely to be resolved anytime soon.  It is the problem of multiple data communication protocols, many of them effectively proprietary, creating a huge incompatible Tower of Babbling Things.  There is no meaningful industry and market wide consensus on how The Internet of Things should communicate with the rest of the Internet.  Until this happens, there can be no fulfillment of the promise of The Internet of Things. I recently posted “Co-opetition: Open Standards Always Win,” which discusses the need for open standards in order for a market to scale up.

Read more: Co-opetition: Open Standards Always Win

A recent ZDNet post explains that home automation currently requires that devices need to be able to connect with “multiple local- and wide-area connectivity options (ZigBee, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GSM/GPRS, RFID/NFC, GPS, Ethernet). Along with the ability to connect many different kinds of sensors, this allows devices to be configured for a range of vertical markets.” Huh?  This is the problem in a nutshell. You do not need to be a data communication engineer to get the point.  And this is not even close to a full discussion of the problem.  There are also IoT vendors who believe that consumers should pay them for the ability to connect to their proprietary Cloud. So imagine paying a fee for every protocol or sensor we employ in our homes. That’s a non-starter.

The above laundry list of data communication protocols, does not include the Zigbee “smart meter” communications standards war.  The Zigbee protocol has been around for years, and claims to be an open industry standard, but many do not agree. Zigbee still does not really work, and a new competing smart meter protocol has just entered the picture.  The Bluetooth IEEE 802.15 standard now may be overtaken by a much more powerful 802.15 3a.  Some are asking if 4G LTE, NFC or WiFi may eliminate Bluetooth altogether.   A very cool new technology, energy harvesting, has begun to take off in the home automation market.  The energy harvesting sensors (no batteries) can capture just enough kinetic, peizo or thermoelectric energy to transmit short data communication “telegrams” to an energy harvesting router or server.  The EnOcean Alliance has been formed around a small German company spun off from Siemens, and has attracted many leading companies in building automation. But EnOcean itself has recently published an article in Electronic Design News, announcing that they have a created “middleware” (quote) “…to incorporate battery-less devices into networks based on several different communication standards such as Wi-Fi, GSM, Ethernet/IP, BACnet, LON, KNX or DALI.”  (unquote).  It is apparent that this space remains very confused, crowded and uncertain.  A new Cambridge UK startup, Neul is proposing yet another new IoT approach using the radio spectrum known as “white space,”  becoming available with the transition from analog to digital television.  With this much contention on protocols, there will be nothing but market paralysis.

Is everyone following all of these acronyms and data comm protocols?  There will be a short quiz at the end of this post. (smile)

The advent of IP version 6, strongly supported by Intel and Cisco Systems has created another area of confusion. The problem with IPv6 in the world of The IoT is “too much information” as we say.  Cisco and Intel want to see IPv6 as the one global protocol for every Internet connected device. This is utterly incompatible with energy harvesting, as the tiny amount of harvested energy cannot transmit the very long IPv6 packets. Hence, EnOcean’s middleware, without which their market is essentially constrained.

Then there is the ongoing new standards and upgrade activity in the International Standards Organization (ISO), The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Special Interest Groups (SIG’s”), none of which seem to be moving toward any ultimate solution to the Tower of Babbling Things problem in The Internet of Things.

The Brave New World of Internet privacy issues relating to this tidal wave of Big Data are not even considered here, and deserve a separate post on the subject.  A recent NBC Technology post has explored many of these issues, while some have suggested we simply need to get over it. We have no privacy.

Read more: Internet of Things pits George Jetson against George Orwell

Stakeholders in The Internet of Things seem not to have learned the repeated lesson of open standards and co-opetition, and are concentrating on proprietary advantage which ensures that this market will not effectively scale anytime in the foreseeable future. Intertwined with the Tower of Babbling Things are the problems of Internet privacy and consumer concerns about wireless communication health & safety issues.  Taken together, this market is not ready for prime time.

 

Now This Is Funny: Top Ten Reasons You’re Not Ready for Today’s Online World

This is not the Letterman Show.  But it is very funny..  Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystem‘s keynote address at an enterprise computing conference held in Pacific Grove a month or so ago. Scott is not particularly well known for his humor and perhaps better known informally for his appreciation of ice hockey.  Someone must have helped him with this Top Ten list list of “reasons you ( or your Chief Information Officer) is not ready for today’s new online world.”

Top Ten List of Reasons You Are Not Ready For Today’s Online World.

10. “GolfShot” is the #1 cloud app on your mobile phone. This is McNealy’s poke at himself, a long time golf nut. 

9.  Your StarTac blurts out that “you’ve got mail.”  

8. You think Gmail is a typo

7. Myspace is your social media site

6. COBOL programming is a requisite for all your new hires.

5  Your grade school child is your tech support at home

4. You believe Computer Associates the leading an open source software provider

3. When someone mentions “Google glasses,” you type “glasses” into the search bar.

2. You are planning to implement OS2 on the desktop.

1. Big Data is a rapper.

The Internet of Things: The Promise Versus the Tower of Babbling Things

The term “Internet of Things”  (IoT) is being loosely tossed around in the media.  But what does it mean? It means simply that data communication, like Internet communication, but not necessarily Internet Protocol packets, is emerging for all manner of “things” in the home, in your car, everywhere: light switches, lighting devices, thermostats, door locks, window shades, kitchen appliances, washers & dryers, home audio and video equipment, even pet food dispensers. You get the idea. It has also been called home automation. All of this communication occurs autonomously, without human intervention. The communication can be between and among these devices, so called machine to machine or M2M communication.  The data communication can also terminate in a compute server where the information can be acted on automatically, or made available to the user to intervene remotely from their smart mobile phone or any other remote Internet connected device.

Another key concept is the promise of automated energy efficiency, with the introduction of “smart meters” with data communication capability, and also achieved in large commercial structures via the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design program or LEED.  Some may recall that when Bill Gates built his multi-million dollar mansion on Lake Washington in Seattle, he had “remote control” of his home built into it.  Now, years later, Gates’ original home automation is obsolete.  The dream of home automation has been around for years, with numerous Silicon Valley conferences, and failed startups over the years, and needless to say, home automation went nowhere. But it is this concept of effortless home automation that has been the Holy Grail.

But this is also where the glowing promise of The Internet of Things (IoT) begins to morph into a giant “hairball.”  The term “hairball” was former Sun Microsystems CEO, Scott McNealy‘s favorite term to describe a complicated mess.  In hindsight, the early euphoric days of home automation were plagued by the lack of “convergence.”  I use this term to describe the inability of available technology to meet the market opportunity.  Without convergence there can be no market opportunity beyond early adopter techno geeks. Today, the convergence problem has finally been eliminated. Moore’s Law and advances in data communication have swept away the convergence problem. But for many years the home automation market was stalled.

The other problem is currently the center of this hairball, and from all indications is not likely to be resolved anytime soon.  It is the problem of multiple data communication protocols, many of them effectively proprietary, creating a huge incompatible Tower of Babbling Things.  There is no meaningful industry and market wide consensus on how The Internet of Things should communicate with the rest of the Internet.  Until this happens, there can be no fulfillment of the promise of The Internet of Things. I recently posted “Co-opetition: Open Standards Always Win,” which discusses the need for open standards in order for a market to scale up.

Read more: Co-opetition: Open Standards Always Win

A recent ZDNet post explains that home automation currently requires that devices need to be able to connect with “multiple local- and wide-area connectivity options (ZigBee, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GSM/GPRS, RFID/NFC, GPS, Ethernet). Along with the ability to connect many different kinds of sensors, this allows devices to be configured for a range of vertical markets.” Huh?  This is the problem in a nutshell. You do not need to be a data communication engineer to get the point.  And this is not even close to a full discussion of the problem.  There are also IoT vendors who believe that consumers should pay them for the ability to connect to their proprietary Cloud. So imagine paying a fee for every protocol or sensor we employ in our homes. That’s a non-starter.

The above laundry list of data communication protocols, does not include the Zigbee “smart meter” communications standards war.  The Zigbee protocol has been around for years, and claims to be an open industry standard, but many do not agree. Zigbee still does not really work, and a new competing smart meter protocol has just entered the picture.  The Bluetooth IEEE 802.15 standard now may be overtaken by a much more powerful 802.15 3a.  Some are asking if 4G LTE, NFC or WiFi may eliminate Bluetooth altogether.   A very cool new technology, energy harvesting, has begun to take off in the home automation market.  The energy harvesting sensors (no batteries) can capture just enough kinetic, peizo or thermoelectric energy to transmit short data communication “telegrams” to an energy harvesting router or server.  The EnOcean Alliance has been formed around a small German company spun off from Siemens, and has attracted many leading companies in building automation. But EnOcean itself has recently published an article in Electronic Design News, announcing that they have a created “middleware” (quote) “…to incorporate battery-less devices into networks based on several different communication standards such as Wi-Fi, GSM, Ethernet/IP, BACnet, LON, KNX or DALI.”  (unquote).  It is apparent that this space remains very confused, crowded and uncertain.  A new Cambridge UK startup, Neul is proposing yet another new IoT approach using the radio spectrum known as “white space,”  becoming available with the transition from analog to digital television.  With this much contention on protocols, there will be nothing but market paralysis.

Is everyone following all of these acronyms and data comm protocols?  There will be a short quiz at the end of this post. (smile)

The advent of IP version 6, strongly supported by Intel and Cisco Systems has created another area of confusion. The problem with IPv6 in the world of The IoT is “too much information” as we say.  Cisco and Intel want to see IPv6 as the one global protocol for every Internet connected device. This is utterly incompatible with energy harvesting, as the tiny amount of harvested energy cannot transmit the very long IPv6 packets. Hence, EnOcean’s middleware, without which their market is essentially constrained.

Then there is the ongoing new standards and upgrade activity in the International Standards Organization (ISO), The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Special Interest Groups (SIG’s”), none of which seem to be moving toward any ultimate solution to the Tower of Babbling Things problem in The Internet of Things.

The Brave New World of Internet privacy issues relating to this tidal wave of Big Data are not even considered here, and deserve a separate post on the subject.  A recent NBC Technology post has explored many of these issues, while some have suggested we simply need to get over it. We have no privacy.

Read more: Internet of Things pits George Jetson against George Orwell

Stakeholders in The Internet of Things seem not to have learned the repeated lesson of open standards and co-opetition, and are concentrating on proprietary advantage which ensures that this market will not effectively scale anytime in the foreseeable future. Intertwined with the Tower of Babbling Things are the problems of Internet privacy and consumer concerns about wireless communication health & safety issues.  Taken together, this market is not ready for prime time.

 

Online Privacy Policy? What Online Privacy…?

A number of my students have asked me about online privacy. Many of us, not only students, have not spent the necessary time to read and research the privacy policies of the major online social media and e-commerce websites, much less to understand the implications they face with the current state of online privacy.  It is time consuming, complicated and riddled with legalese. Even if you spent the time, you probably wouldn’t understand it, so why bother?

Scott McNealy, the founder and former CEO of Sun Microsystems (now owned by Oracle), is perhaps most famous for one quote.

“Privacy? Get over it! You have no privacy!”

There is a joke that is told about valet parking at a posh restaurant.  A diner and his guest pull up to one of the finest local restaurants in front of a sign saying “valet parking.”   A very well-dressed gentlemen approaches the car and graciously opens the car doors. The gentleman accepts the keys from the driver of the late model BMW 5 Series turbo. After being seated for dinner, the diner mentions to the waiter how impressed he was with attentiveness of the valet parking staff, to which the waiter replies in shocked disbelief, ” What valet parking?”

This amusing anecdote is not so funny if you consider that is pretty close to what is happening to all of us when we visit online social media websites, or e-commerce sites.   We feel comfortable and relatively safe on well-known websites, not realizing that our BMW has been stolen by that nice gentleman with “valet parking.”  This loss of personal privacy is very real and very immediate for all of us.

“What privacy?”

Just for the record, and for whatever it is worth, the opening sentence of the privacy policy for this website reads as follows, “I have a firm belief in personal privacy, and to Internet privacy. To the extent that I can protect privacy in a cyber World dominated by large corporate self–interest, I will do my utmost to protect user privacy.”  I can do almost nothing about the privacy policies set by the global social media companies.

We know very little about the details of the personal information that has been extracted from us, how it is managed, how it is used, and with whom it is shared, and how much money has been paid for it. Perhaps we deserve a cut?  We do know that more information has been gathered on the Internet in the last two years, than in all of the previous years combined. It is beyond terabytes. It is multiple zetabytes of information and growing exponentially. The world of Big Data, for better or worse, will be built on this massive pile of personal data.

Silicon Valley’s social media industry is fighting privacy advocates over proposed California legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, that would require companies like Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. to disclose to users the personal data they have collected and with whom they have shared it.

Bonnie Lowenthal, a Democratic California assemblywoman from Long Beach (my native home town) has introduced this legislation, the “Right to Know Act.”  What is disturbing and surprising is that  the bill has caused a massive backlash against it, though it is asking for simple transparency, similar to that required for credit reporting. Google and Facebook are conspicuously silent on the “Right to Know Act,” preferring to let their industry association and unknown lobbyists speak for them.

The industry backlash against the “Right to Know Act”. It would make Internet companies, upon request, share with Californians personal information they have collected—including buying habits, physical location and sexual orientation—and what they have passed on to third parties such as marketing companies, app makers and other companies that collect and sell data.

Why are the Internet companies fighting this simple transparency so vigorously?  Google formerly trumpeted that it’s corporate watch phrase was to “do no evil.”  The industry backlash against Ms. Lowenthal’s legislation does not feel like doing no evil.

The bill highlights how lawmakers are seeking to update privacy laws. An update of a 10-year-old law focused on the direct-marketing industry, the bill could have national impact because of California’s size, and it would bring the state’s privacy practices closer to those common in Europe.

“In 2003, the biggest problem people had with privacy was telemarketing,” said Ms. Lowenthal. “Today, there are so many different mobile apps that can track location and spending habits that it’s time for an update in state law.”

I will continue to monitor this issue and report on it as it develops.

Big Data: Big Deal Or Not?

I have been having a spirited marathon debate with a couple of my friends.  Is this alleged new “Big Data thingy” so transformational that it will change our every day lives, or is it just an evolutionary advance that may improve productivity but not much else?  The same arguments may apply to the concept of “The Cloud,” and “Smart Mobile.”  The three, taken together, are coalescing into the major information technology forces that will drive innovation and productivity into the foreseeable future.

PollDaddy: What Is Your Opinion?  Big Data: Big Deal Or Not? Or Comment Below

We are hearing regularly in the media about so-called “Big Data.”  What exactly is Big Data? A number of differing definitions have been offered from a wide range of media sources. ZDNet‘s definition is one of the best I have seen so far.  In essence, big data is about liberating data that is large in volume, broad in variety and high in velocity from multiple sources in order to create efficiencies, develop new products and be more competitive. Forrester puts it succinctly in saying that big data encompasses “techniques and technologies that make capturing value from data at an extreme scale economical”  Prior to the emergence of commercial Big Data, the concept only existed where cost was no object: in the black world of the National Security Administration, and required the largest purpose-built supercomputers in existence.

A zettabyte (symbol ZB, derived from the SI prefix zetta-) is a quantity of information or information storage capacity equal to 10²¹ bytes or 1,000 exabytes (or one sextillion (one long scale trilliard) bytes).^{[1][2][3][4][5]…..I Billion terabytes….Today, you can walk into your local computer store and buy a couple of terabyes for a $100.  Only $500 Million for a zettabyte.  In real terms that is dirt cheap, and getting cheaper daily.   Now that we have that cleared up, we can move to the next level.}

With regard to the obvious issue of personal privacy, the European Union and other organizations have made efforts to protect privacy, with very mixed results.  Other governments, notably China, are aggressively implementing opposite policies to strictly limit privacy.  Highly sophisticated telecommunications equipment has been available for years that enables deep analysis of all of your voice and Internet traffic. We learned this when Dick Cheney secretly set up such equipment to track and record all voice and data traffic in the United States.  The equipment trapped and analyzed all of it in real time. You didn’t notice a thing.  The thing about your personal data is that they already have it. Most of it comes from public sources you authorized.   I not advocating this, I am only the messenger. The founder and former CEO of Sun Microsystems, Scott McNealy famously said, “You have no privacy. Get over it.”  We must not ignore the serious issue of privacy, but the problem is already here and deep data mining is thriving.  Privacy needs a revolution of its own.

The core question then becomes whether Big Data, and for that matter, the Cloud, and Smart Mobile, represent revolutionary and transformational changes in technological capability and also consequentially, human culture, politics: how we conduct ourselves in the World.  Or is it just so many more boring zeros and ones zooming by at the speed of light, stored in chips, and processed by quantum microprocessors?  No big deal, just IT management as normal.  Frankly, this is a significant philosophical question.  For this discussion, we will focus only on Big Data.   Discussion of the Cloud and Smart Mobile will follow later.  My most recent post on Smart Mobile gives a hint of my thoughts:  Mobile Market Share: A War of Titans Worth Following, http://mayo615.com/2013/01/21/mobile-os-market-share-strategy-war-of-the-titans-worth-following/

In fairness, I cut my teeth on Marshall McLuhan‘s ideas while in university in the 1960’s.  In an amazing irony, I soon fell into Intel Corporation at the birth of the microprocessor revolution, and later, I was also present to personally participate in the emergence of the personal computer. My memory of McLuhan kept popping up everywhere.   As my career progressed, I seemed to jump onto each new wave: networking at Sun Microsystems,  then the Internet infrastructure build out explosion with Ascend Communications, and finally a host of new companies, based on Internet-based capabilities.  Through all of it, I could only conclude that somehow McLuhan, like some kind of modern Nostradamus, had foreseen it all.   Most importantly, my own life was transformed by it all, and I saw with my own eyes the massive transformation occurring all around me.

So I have no doubt that Big Data is transforming our lives, and will continue to transform our lives, in ways we cannot yet fully grasp, as I could not grasp McLuhan when I first heard him, or the significance of the Internet as I sat right in the middle of it.

I have previously described Big Data as analogous to the evolution of Chaos Theory.  For centuries, full understanding of the complexity of nature’s designs were thought to be the realm of God, and beyond human comprehension and explanation.  Then in the 1960’s in places like Santa Cruz, California and Germany, the elegant simplicity of a solution to chaos began to emerge.  The massive scale of Big Data is a very similar nut to crack. We are now seeing an elite group of data scientists and mathematicians begin to solve Big Data in a way similar to how chaos was resolved.  Google, Microsoft Bing, Baidu, Yahoo and Amazon are driving the development of these mathematical skill sets.

Last year I showed my UBC Faculty of Management students a YouTube video on Data Mining. In the video, the two Hungarian mathematicians leading a data mining company, described how they had solved hideously complex problems that were previously beyond any computational solution. The key to their success was their ability to extract very precise useful information from extraordinarily large stores of information.  The metaphor here is more like finding a particular grain of sand on a very large beach.  A parallel key factor has been the incessant march of Moore’s Law.  Even 10 years ago, successful data mining on this scale could not have been accomplished. The computational cycles and high speed mass storage were not available or were too expensive.   Today those microprocessor cycles are available.  The costs will continue to plummet, making further advances inevitable. Failure to consider Moore’s Law and available computational cycles has also been the cause of many failed ideas over the years. But the threshold has arrived.

Today, developments like Google Spanner, the largest known database architecture in the World, have joined with the computational solutions.

Unveiled this fall after years of hints and rumors, it’s the first worldwide database worthy of the name — a database designed to seamlessly operate across hundreds of data centers and millions of machines and trillions of rows of information.

Spanner is a creation so large, some have trouble wrapping their heads around it. But the end result is easily explained: With Spanner, Google can offer a web service to a worldwide audience, but still ensure that something happening on the service in one part of the world doesn’t contradict what’s happening in another.

Google’s decision to reveal Spanner has many dimensions.  First, it provides a peek into the black World of the U.S.  National Security Agency and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.  Previously, the existence of such large and sophisticated global databases were only imagined. We now know they exist and are a crucial component of Big Data.

Read more in my post, Google Spanner, the single largest database in the world

http://mayo615.com/2012/11/26/inside-google-spanner-the-single-largest-database-in-the-world/

For me, the most compelling example of how this all works, has been the extremely sophisticated Big Data mining used by the Obama campaign to achieve re-election. As early as March 2012, the Wall Street Journal began reporting about “Dashboard,”  the Obama campaign app that was mining Big Data to find undecided voters in key states.  But not only undecided voters.  Dashboard can key in, find and persuade “Off the Grid” voters.  Off the Grid is the term used to describe those people, such as students and other young people, with constantly changing locations and only a mobile phone.  These voters have historically been virtually impossible to reach.  This short PBS Newshour video below speaks volumes about the extraordinary impact and value of Big Data, not seen before.

Watch How Much Do Digital Campaigns Know About You? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

The campaign’s hiring of Rayid Ghani, as “chief data scientist,” and an army of data analysts, set the stage for what was to come.  On election night, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were absolutely convinced that they had won the election, but were shocked to find otherwise. Working through their disbelief, both candidates later remarked about the enormous voter turnout for Democrats in key locations and the “technology advantage” of the Obama campaign.

So from my years of observation of the march of technology and its impact on my own life, I am convinced that we are entering another transformational period as profound as the emergence of the Internet itself.

I have been repeatedly drawn back to Steve Job’s 2005 Stanford University commencement address, in which he closes with references to Stuart Brand and The Whole Earth Catalog. Stuart Brand is an extraordinary futurist.  One of Ken Kesey’s original Merry Prankster’s chronicled in Tom Wolfe’s book non-fiction novel, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Brand had been inspired by the legendary first photograph of the entire Earth taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Frank Borman.  Brand is also the founder of The Well,  the very early Sausalito-based Internet Service Provider, who is now considered one of the most important thinkers on human culture, technology and its impacts.  Word of Job’s commencement address spread virally around the Valley...”Did you hear what Job’s said at Stanford today?”    Steve was basically saying that he too understood what McLuhan had said, and that Stuart Brand also understood the transformational importance of the Global Village, by publishing The Whole Earth Catalog.