Handshaking with Internet of Things (IoT)

Internet of Things in abbreviated form is known as IoT. It provides a mechanism where gadgets, machines other than conventional systems viz. Desktops, Laptops, Palmtops, tablets and smart phones are capable of communicating to each other over the Internet. The communications between such entities are not restricted to human interventions. Which means machines and systems can directly communicate with each other using the internet. Thus IoT provides a communicating environment where non living objects and living beings are tagged with unique identifying tags enabling them to exchange data using Human Machine Interactions (HMI) or Machine to Machine (M2M) communications.

The Journey So far

• It will be interesting to take a look at the communication timeline progression.
• The first pioneering breakthrough of data transmission using Electromagnetic Telegraph surfaced around 1832 courtesy a Russian scientist Baron Pavel Schilling, popularly known as Paul Schilling.
• Same time around, in the year 1833  a German Mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and another German Physicist Wilhelm Weber demonstrated how to communicate using Electromechanical Telegraph over a distance of 1500 m.
• A decade after, in the year 1844 an American painter, an inventor  Samuel  Morse came out with Morse code system for transmitting far distance telegraphic messages.
• Antonio Meucci an Italy inventor , Alexander Graham Bell a Scottish scientist and Thomas Watson an US bookkeeper made several attempts with electromagnetic telephones in the late 19th century before Bell finally was credited to be the inventor of Telephone in 1876.

         

In 1926, Nickolas Tesla predicated that at an opportune time, humans will witness Telephone devices so small that they fit in the vest pocket, which would work in wireless mode.

• It won’t be out of place to quickly run through the evolution of computers  though scope of this writeup is limited to communication.
• In 1833 Charles Babbage an English mechanical engineer pioneered to lay down the foundation of a general purpose computing device; which consisted of an arithmetic logic unit, a control flow with an integrated memory.
• Since then we have witnessed the computers to evolve and refined through several generations. Right from being housed in big rooms built up with huge electrodes to Mainframes, to Macros, to Minis, to PCs, to Desktops, to Laptops, to Palmtops, to tablets;  so on and so forth.
• Gradual and steady transition from Analog to Digital computing devices.
• With computing devices becoming available more prominently  now there was a huge curiosity amongst the scientific and resource community as how to connect these devices and exchange data.
• Lot of networking projects were funded by government bodies, military  establishments and educational institutes such as ARPANET, NPL, CYCLADES, Merit Network, Tymnet, CSNET, NSFNET etc.
• Late ‘60 s  through Late ‘90s  the internet was used by the boffins and geeks, more for scientific and research works with  very limited and restricted  commercial usage.
• Since early 2000 all restrictions were removed and internet were opened for mass usage.
• Some protocols are http, ftp, smtp, imap, mailto, telnet.

# Year 1969; ARPANET was formed. 

# Year 1974; TCP / IP was constituted.

# Year 1984; the Domain Name System was established.

# Year 1989; Tim Berners-Lee proposed WWW and created first Webpage in 1991

The Way Forward

• In our times we have witnessed a galore of transition wherein, computing devices have been consistently becoming smaller and smaller. And with this, they bring striking features such as fast processing / computing speeds, smaller size memory  with extraordinary huge storage capacity, low power consumption and most importantly ever expandable capabilities.
• We have seen how Internet is becoming accessible from all nooks and corners regardless wired or unwired. And with the passing time how refinements are being achieved to improvised on its speed, bandwidth and availability.
• Technology remains Young on the face of time, shall always be a gospel truth to ponder.
• Now as we are about to cross over decade and a half of the 21st Century, we are all set to witness a new transition.
• We have just boarded on a new technological era which is mandated to connect you, me, he, she, him, her, we, they, us, them, that (Refrigerator), this (Car),  those (Play stations), etc. etc.  All are going to be connected over the Internet.
• Its time, we are going to witness Internet of (every) Thing !

The phrase "Internet of Things" has been  coined by Kevin Ashton executive director of the Auto-ID Center.

• Since early 2000 Internet created a huge impact on the masses.
• Players like Amazon and eBay popularized  electronic commerce. 
• Buying, Selling, Trading, Banking, Procuring, Staffing, Financing etc etc.; everywhere it was to be seen a  quick adaption to internet.
• Google, Yahoo, Lycos spearheaded the search engine market place.
• Free web based (anytime, anywhere) emails were offered thick and wide by Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc.
• Least we talk about the wide throng acceptance of social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, Pinterest, Digg, g+, YouTube etc. These have now become necessity of ones lifestyle.  
• With the advent of mobile internet during the late 2000, mCommerce  paved its way and ever since started creating huge impact with the availability of the Internet on the Tip, Internet on the Move

# Posting moods and updates on Facebook timeline  

# Blogging and posting Micro Blogs with a Twitter handle.

# Keeping connect with friends and acquaintances on WhatsApp 

• IoT will break all the barriers of communication capabilities.  We can very well see seamless communications between  Machine to Machine in tandem to Human Machines Interaction.
  
  

 IoT Applications are not just limited to Healthcare, Education, Logistics, Lifestyle, Finance, Governance,  Management etc.

 Potentially its reach is beyond ones digital imagination !

Gartner, Inc. forecasts that 4.9 billion connected things will be in use in 2015, up 30 percent

from 2014, and will reach 25 billion by 2020. The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a

powerful force for business transformation, and its disruptive impact will be felt across all

industries and all areas of society.

Vice President & a distinguished analyst at Gartner, Jim Tully suggests:

“The digital shift instigated by the Nexus of Forces (cloud, mobile, social and information), and

boosted by IoT, threatens many existing businesses. They have no choice but to pursue IoT, like they’ve done with the consumerization of IT,”