The Internet of Things Myth

This book comes in four parts.The first part sets the scene by taking us back to 2010. This was when many made optimistic predictions for the Internet of Things (IoT), and we show how these have not been realised - indeed how they have been missed by quite some distance.The second part is an analysis of why the forecasts were so badly missed. Our overarching thesis is that the forecasts would have been plausible if IoT had been implemented flawlessly. Of course, this did not happen. We look at many of the reasons why mistakes were made, from the assumptions that if IoT building blocks were available then users would flood to the technologies, to the mistake of applying ‘internet’ thinking to the world of ‘things’. The mistakes were many, so this is a long part of the book, but an important one to chart how to avoid these mistakes in the future.In the third part we make some predictions of our own. We look at the areas where we believe mistakes are likely to be made in the future, such as the assumptions that artificial intelligence (AI) will be the answer to all of IoT’s issues, and the view that 5G will deliver some sort of connectivity that will form the missing piece in the puzzle.Our final part sets out our views on how to get it right. We discuss the need for a single standard for connectivity and for an honest understanding of the value chain for IoT and hence the opportunities (and lack of them).