1. Lucy SetianTCS Digital Worldlucys@tcsdigitalworld.comInternet of Things:The wireless Generation of Digital Empowerment365760365760-6223008589010<br />Research area<br />Internet of Things puts mobile in the center<br />1G, 2G, 3G, 4G…but where will the communications expansion end? Isn’t it the human lifestyle, which is based on the constant usage of communications tools the reason for the cut-edge technologies, which appear every single day in the past decade? <br />Isn’t it our generation which grew up playing on the first computer games, started using mobifones, later got attached to the smartphones and currently reads up the latest issues of favorite magazines on an iPad? We turned into unconscious witnesses of the mobile technological expansion without even realizing that we live in the tomorrow’s history; the history of internet revolution, not in terms of its growing usage from the masses, but in regards to its maintenance as an environment for the adaptation of various technological attainments in favor of the easier and more flexible smart living. <br />Why to use several devices when you can combine all technologies in one and still have variety of experiences?<br />Technology is general byname for knowledge, solutions, devices, and methods. It represents all together and separate things discretely. In the Future of Internet it will be the best word to describe the Internet of Things (IoT) as well, which will strive to create a mainstream commodities of the type all-in-one, which are efficient, easy-to-use, simple to maintain and cheaper than their ancestors. IoT will be not only smart. It will be the direct reflection of the way human brain thinks. It will be in your hand, under your skin, around you and still be invisible. If you wonder which will be its focal point, the answer is obvious – <br />Mobile Phone is Hub of Internet of Things.<br />As Qualcomm Chairman and CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs pointed out during the February 2011 edition of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in this new network, where inanimate objects are Internet-enabled, your mobile phone will sit in the center of this Web of things. It will help you orchestrate the interactions of the things around you and provide real-time access to all sorts of info, including the people you meet, the places you go and the content that's available there. The phone is the key to authenticating with these connected devices and taking their content with you, wherever you go. (See Mobile Phones Will Serve as Central Hub to quot;
Internet of Thingsquot;
). However, going a step further after the successful expansion of new mobile technologies as PNAs (PDAs), iPads and etc. we can easily see that mobile is not only limited to the shell of phone devices. <br />Changes<br />In the beginning Internet gave the opportunity to people from all ends of the world to communicate and collaborate. Of course the reason was economically justified in terms of the decrease of the mobility problems in the daily routine of needs. But that is in the past. Today Internet demands from you to be mobile and you demand from its usage a total real-time control over your actives. It is not only the way to interact with other people. And as in the beginning Internet was associated with the PC, today we see that the devices exploiting it are in various forms, sizes, offering a wide-ranged solutions’ list. <br />The nowadays Internet can be described as a mainly human-to-human communication tool but the future looks towards the individual as the center of his own universe and his needs by the creation of the deeper link human-to-technology. It will end up into the easy-to-access and use ubiquitous network, consisting of interactive devices, which correspondent directly to the emotional and physical needs of the person. <br />The technologies, created in the past 20 years independently and unattached one from each other in their global vision pushed higher the human’s need of global control over these discrete tools of the digital control and foreseen the rise of the new era of technologies’ unification in the 15 years to come.<br />Vision<br />Every person is the center of his own world of needs, requirements and expectations. The future IoT promises a fulfillment of all of these not only in a quantitative but also in qualitative dimension and direction. IoT will deliver the new sustainable consumerism model based on the understanding not only of the worth but also of the value of services and products. <br />As a showcase of the first adaptations between humans’ needs and technological realities, we would like to introduce one of the projects of TCS Digital World - the iPad applications of the Belgian Beer Café – AB Inbev and more exactly – the Menu & Food pairing app. <br />It represents a startup screen with the menu of the relevant BBC. One can choose from a range of beers and food by scrolling through the menu. The user gets more info about the selected beers and dishes: origin, history, background info on the brewery, taste, nutrition, etc. Once the user has made his choice, he will receive advice on matching the best products (beer x / y food). If he wants – he can print it and take it with him. <br />99% of you will agree that time is the most valuable resource and hence its value couldn’t be compared with anything else, we do our best to spare it. Imagine now this idea a bit modified and implemented in a bit different way. <br />A simple click on an order button for your products can then connect you with your favorite store and assure their delivery straight to your home. It is not only fast and easy to do, fun and saves you a lot of time to go to the concrete location. And as we know, that time is money, it can also compensate not only your car’s gas to the store but also you can use that time to do something else, which will be relevant to your finances. If we go further into our perception, an alarm-sensor on our fridge would be able to tell us when a certain product reaches its expiry date or is about to end. Why not to have a mini computer in our fridge, which will issue the statistics of our recent purchases and create a benchmark for what we usually buy and what kind of vitamins and minerals these products contain. Then the device can advice us what to put into the shopping list for the next time, considering the information it has from our purchases’ list and the data about the number of people who use that, their age, physical and health details, meal habits and etc. Everytime the fridge creates the statistics we can get sms telling us more about what is good to be bought and etc. <br />IoT promises a deep interconnectivity and sensibility to the humans’ necessities. And that is just the beginning.<br />Challenges<br />Technologies become cheaper all over the world not in years, but in days. But it’s not the technological tool itself, which is costly, but the access to it and its usage price. One of the biggest challenges of our century is the obtaining of equal rights of Internet access to people from all over the world and the ICT policies are responsible to create a real transparency and raise awareness about the topic. One of the biggest issues is the standardization of the different technologies in the different locations. These must be feasible with global applications but still answer a various standard rules in regards of the fact that the code execution is decentralized. One of the biggest challenges concerns the creation of unified energy consumption standardization, which will also reflect the vision of the sustainable future. <br />Intended to guarantee a wireless access from each possible spot and to be able to have full time coverage over different integrated appliances, one of the major issues of the smart technologies is connected with the security. On one hand unitized in their standards of usage, on the other all of the technologies must guarantee the safety of the information and personal data, which will be transmitted and therefore lead to a complex structures regarding the verification, authentication and security. <br />One of the biggest challenges ahead will be the overcoming of the technological imbalance in knowledge between the developed countries and the ones, which are still behind or just starting to embrace the rise up of innovation. It is not about the idea of IoT, it’s also how people would be able to interact with it as a natural habit. The mental change of mind will support the shaping of the new vision about technology, as it will exist – closer to people. Governments, industry and global key-players will hold the responsibility for the introduction of this big life-changing shift to people and therefore, they must have the awareness that transparency, democracy in the management, idea-implementation, usage and responsibilities’ distribution is not a task which could be monopolized but it must be as the technology itself – globally allocated in terms of economic independence, fair trade and understandings. <br />Solutions<br />Our generation lives with the awareness that invention and innovation has a price, and that the technology envisioned through both of them by the masses is that what we call a lifestyle. Exactly the lifestyle defines the price and we are ready to pay it. However, our generation is also the one who demands accessible innovation and in the coming few years will witness a big mindshift towards sustainable solutions, easy-to-use and with low energy-consumption, which will be also a precondition for the development of the next generation of highly literate in digital environments specialists from the global community, who speak one and the same language – the one of technology. <br />IoT doesn’t concern only the environments in which we live, work and grow. Smart living means also smart thinking and it requires a new set of skills, which are combination of technological and soft skills. <br />The IoT must be self-maintaining, self-developing and self-sustainable. It must be also smart in terms of user experience and accessibility and therefore we can be sure that one of the easiest way to bring the new knowledge to people is to introduce them the complex solutions of different technologies in the easy to use and already familiar mobile surface and shell. Therefore, we must be ready to give the Mobile Technology of IoT the freedom to become a living organism with which we can live in synergy and not just to use without to understand its essence. <br />