The Rise of the Internet of Things

The Rise of the Internet of Things

I'm really jazzed about a term that was coined over 10 years ago but is just now really starting to become a reality: The Internet of Things, which is often abbreviated as "IoT."

Here's a video by the CEO of ioBridge talking about it:

As devices around us become smarter, we are going to transition from living in a mostly analog world where digital is an interloper, to a world where digital and analog seamlessly co-exist. It's kind of like moving from fire & candles to electricity. When Edison first successfully tested a light bulb in 1879 (it stayed lit for 13.5 hours), electricity was the thing. Now, electricity is so integrated into every facet of our lives that we never think about it. As things around us become smarter, we won't think about the "internet" or the "internet of things" so much as it'll be all around us and we'll leverage these smart objects in ways we haven't even though about yet.

GE calls the Internet of Things the 3rd wave:

and GE has a whitepaper on it which goes into a ton of detail and calculates that the Industrial Internet represents a $32.3 trillion opportunity.

From my perspective, the beauty of the IoT is that it meshes seamlessly with smartphones. Three great examples are the startup Automatic that I wrote about earlier this year, which allows a phone to interface with a vehicle, Lockitron, which allows you to lock & unlock your door remotely, and Tile App, which is 'Lojack for anything."

There's an incredible amount of innovation that's already coming from this 3rd wave of innovation, and it's very symbiotic with the rise of mobile. What are you going to do to capitalize on it?