"wireless networks" entries
Hurdles to the Internet of Things prove more social than technical
MIT's IoTFest reveals the IoT poses as much challenge as it does promise.
Last Saturday’s IoT Festival at MIT became a meeting-ground for people connecting the physical world. Embedded systems developers, security experts, data scientists, and artists all joined in this event. Although it was called a festival, it had a typical conference format with speakers, slides, and question periods. Hallway discussions were intense.
However you define the Internet of Things (O’Reilly has its own take on it, in our Solid blog site and conference), a lot stands in the way of its promise. And these hurdles are more social than technical.
Participants eye O’Reilly books (Credit: IoT Festival)
Some of the social discussion we have to have before we get the Internet of Things rolling are:
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What effects will all this data collection, and the injection of intelligence into devices, have on privacy and personal autonomy? And how much of these precious values are we willing to risk to reap the IoT’s potential for improving life, saving resources, and lowering costs?
Report from HIMSS Health IT conference: building or bypassing infrastructure
lectronic record systems need all kinds of underlying support. Your
patient doesn't want to hear, "You need an antibiotic right away, but
we'll order it tomorrow when our IT guy comes in to reboot the
system." Your accounts manager would be almost as upset if you told
her that billing will be delayed for the same reason.
One hundred eighty degrees of freedom: signs of how open platforms are spreading
Visualize open networks–and remember how far we've already come from
the days before flat-rate long distance phone calls (much less app
stores for cell phones).
Innovation Battles Investment as FCC Road Show Returns to Cambridge
Opponents can shed their rhetoric and reveal new depths to their thought when you bring them together for rapid-fire exchanges, sometimes with their faces literally inches away from each other. That made it worth my while to truck down to the MIT Media Lab for yesterday’s Workshop on Innovation, Investment and the Open Internet, sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission. The event showed that innovation and investment are not always companions on the Internet. An in-depth look at the current state of the debate over competition and network neutrality.