By Cathy Aronson
Reliving the past and imagining the future is a common human past-time. Today we have adapted with technology to capture the moment, using evolving skills to instantly share selfies via smartphones on social media. But how often do we stop to consider the past to see the future now?
The world media took stock of past predictions of future technology on October 21 2015, the day envisaged in a 80s sci-fi film Back to the Future II. While flying in food waste fuelled cars is not yet a reality, other technology featured in the film now exists including unmanned drones, flat screen TVs, video calls, wearable tech and digital payments.
So now the future is here, do we notice the things we use every day that are connected to the internet – your smartphone, tablet, game console and even your smart TV and fridge.
It’s called the ‘Internet of Things’ and it’s estimated by 2020 there will be 50 billion objects connected to the internet, in a population of 7.6 billion people.
A common example of how this will work is a fridge that knows more than your doctor and automatically re-stocks your gluten free paleo diet food via online shopping. It’s the merging of minds and machines to make our lives easier and innovate industries like farming.
What the #
Wikipedia describes the Internet of Things (IoT) as ‘the network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data.’
What we love
We all love to save time and do less, if we can rely on a device to know enough to make our lives easier. But as the future approaches, do we know what data we are sharing, where it goes and who owns it and the impact on our future selves?