Do not become slave to the Internet of Things

“IN THE next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations.” (Neil Gross, 1999).

The Internet of Things is now an integral part of our lives.

The Internet of Things refers to the rapidly growing network of connected objects that can collect and exchange data using embedded sensors. This is our reality. The Internet of Things allows us to remember to take our medicines, track our activity levels, make sure the alarm is on and the oven is off, track down our lost keys, keep our plants alive, avoid traffic congestion – and more.

Auto-ID Centre at MIT co-founder and executive director, Kevin Ashton, first mentioned the Internet of Things in a presentation he made to Procter & Gamble in 1999.

Ashton said the potential of the Internet of Things was this: “. . . If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things – using data they gathered without any help from us – we would be able to track and count everything and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost.

“We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling and whether they were fresh or past their best.”

The Internet of Things is awesome! Right?

At the level of big businesses like Oracle and Google, the Internet of Things presents tremendous opportunities.

But, at an individual level, a word of caution may be required.

What sets humans apart from machines is our ability to make judgments. However, the Internet of Things presents us with parameters that allow us to get lazy in our judgments.

For example, we may rely on the sensors and cameras in our cars when we reverse, rather than checking in our mirrors and out of our windows before reversing. It also fills our minds with soundbites, fragmented pieces of half-truths from multiple sources that lead to the cultural ADHD that we all experience to some degree.

So, should we quit the Internet?

Author of The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember and The Glass Cage: Where Automation is Taking Us, Nicholas Carr, believes “it’s through remembering that we make connections with what we know, what we feel, and this gives rise to personal knowledge. If we’re not forming rich connections in our own minds, we’re not creating knowledge”.

Memory research tells us that we only remember information we pay attention to, so perhaps our call to action is not to quit the internet but to narrow our focus and to rekindle our abilities to think deeply. Here are some ways to better focus, remember and give your mind space and time to process information:

Identify what is important: Use the Internet of Things to access data points or initiate actions that will have a positive impact on clearly defined focus areas in your life or work;

Write things down: By writing things down, we double our chances of committing it to memory and, if that fails, we have a record to come back to when we have the headspace;

Create the right environment: minimise distractions as much as possible by putting your phone on silent, retreating to a quiet room or simply clearing your desk of everything but what you need for a particular task;

Stay on task: with an eight-second attention span, your mind will wander. When this happens, stop your train of thought, take a deep breath and go back to the task at hand. Practice listening to your inner dialogue; and

Reflect: at the end of the day, think back on all that you have seen and experienced.

The Internet of Things can make us lazy, limiting the thinking that allows us to evolve, to create, to connect.

Let us not be lazy.