There is a technological juggernaut heading our way. It’s called the Internet of Things (IoT). For the tech industry, it’s the Next Big Thing, alongside big data, though in fact that pair are often just two sides of the same coin. The basic idea is that since computing devices are getting smaller and cheaper, and wireless network technology is becoming ubiquitous, it will soon be feasible to have trillions of tiny, networked computers embedded in everything. They can sense changes, turning things on and off, making decisions about whether to open a door or close a valve or order fresh supplies of milk, you name it, the computers communicating with one another and shipping data to server farms all over the place.
As ever with digital technology, there’s an underlying rationality to lots of this. The IoT could make our lives easier and our societies more efficient. If parking bays could signal to nearby cars that they are empty, then the nightmarish task of finding a parking place in crowded cities would be eased. If every river in the UK could tweet its level every few minutes, then we could have advance warning of downstream floods in time to alert those living in their paths. And so on.
But that kind of networking infrastructure takes time to build, so the IoT boys (and they are mostly boys, still) have set their sights closer to home, which is why we are beginning to hear a lot about “smart” homes. On further examination, this turns out mostly to mean houses stuffed with networked kit.
“Because every home should be a smart home this Christmas,” burbles an ad from Samsung, “we’re treating you to some fantastic deals. Getting started is easy with SmartThings. Simply set up your SmartThings Hub and free app, add in your favourite products, and take control from another room – or another country. It’s simple to set up, too, meaning you can start making your home smarter in no time.” The smart things in question include sensors of various kinds, remotely controlled power outlets, a wireless hub and – of course – a smartphone app that enables you to turn on your lights (or see who’s in your sitting room) when you’re on a beach in Thailand.
And it’s not just Samsung. Other big companies are getting in on the act. Google, for example, has bought Nest, an outfit that makes a “learning thermostat” that uses sensors and algorithms to learn about your energy usage and (it’s hoped) save you money.
A study by Accenture found that 13% of homes already have one or more IoT devices and predicts that 69% will have an IoT device by 2019.
Home-owners who place too much trust in such devices could easily wind up on the PleaseRobMe website
As with all such predictions, this one should be taken with a grain of salt. But suppose, for a moment, that it’s accurate and that within a decade a large proportion of homes have become smart. What would be the implications?
To qualify as a smart home, a house would have to have multiple devices (sensors, switches, thermostats, lights, etc), most of which would be linked wirelessly to a hub that in turn communicates with the outside world.
The devices will monitor the activities and rhythms of the household so that they can optimise energy consumption and so on. That means data flowing from devices to other devices via the hub and perhaps also to external servers, suppliers etc. So a smart home monitors – or, you could say, spies on – its owner(s). And that could have serious implications for privacy.
Further, a smart home is, by definition, a networked one. And that, in turn, has consequences. One is increased complexity – and corresponding user bafflement if anything goes wrong. Another is insecurity, since nothing connected to the internet can be regarded as totally secure. And this is deeply ironic, since we know that one of the reasons why people want smart homes – with all the associated monitoring enabled by the technology – is to increase their security.
So-called smart meters provide an instructive case study of this paradox in action. At the moment, most of our electricity and gas meters are dumb, analogue devices: they record your consumption and someone comes round periodically to take a reading.
This is inefficient and wasteful and so there’s a strong push under way to fit homes with smart meters. These are purely digital devices that are networked so that the utility company can bill you without having to send a man to your door.
The smart meter has advantages for consumers. Since the price of electricity varies on an hourly basis, the meter enables them to decide when they wish to consume it. They can, for example, run their washing machines and dishwashers in the middle of the night, when demand – and therefore the price per unit – is low.
And for the utility company, the meter has significant benefits, such as being able remotely to disconnect consumers’ supply if they don’t pay the bill, instead of going to all the legal and logistical palaver currently involved in cutting off a subscriber.
But there is an obvious fly in this soothing ointment. For if the utility company can remotely disconnect you, then, given that there is no such thing as a completely secure networked device, so could a hacker in Novosibirsk. In fact, he could conceivably disconnect every house in East Anglia. It’s the old, old story: technology giveth and technology taketh away.
And the (in)security problem with current generations of smart things is exacerbated by the fact that many of the outfits scrambling to get into this market seem to know little about network security.
A study by HP, the computer manufacturer, for example, found that more than half of the 10 current consumer brands surveyed had obvious security holes. Home-owners who place too much trust in such devices could easily wind up on the Please Rob Me website.
But this will change as the market matures. These are very early days in the smart homes business: the moment when your car will tell your oven to switch on when GPS indicates that you’re 15 minutes away will remain a marketing fantasy for the tech industry (and an April Fool’s Day joke for BMW) for a long time to come.
The bulk of the UK’s housing stock can’t easily be retrospectively reconfigured, so what will happen is that most of us will wind up buying odd bits of kit – a Bluetooth music set-up, say, or a home security system or a robotic cat flap – and then trying to figure out how it works. And what to do when it doesn’t...
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