Announcement: The Internet of Things will drastically change our lives rather soon. In this article, we will look at its most essential advantages and explain the essence of the IoT phenomenon.
The Internet of Things (IoT) became one of the hottest technological buzzwords of recent years. This term suggests that multiple objects such as household appliances, elements of the urban infrastructure and even living creatures will capture large amounts of data with the help of in-built sensors and exchange this information online. Below, we will look at IoT benefits for business and private users that we should be able to appreciate rather soon.
Changes That Will Affect Everyone
Our better-interconnected world would become smarter, faster and more efficient. Many problems that seem difficult today will be effortlessly solved. Our quality of life will increase and there should be fewer emergencies.
Automation and Cutting Costs
Today, we spend too much time, funds and effort on transferring information. When all devices become interconnected, people will be able to concentrate on those tasks that require the genuine “human touch” — such as education, nursing or psychological help. There will be no need to operate each device manually to achieve the desired result. Thanks to streamlined control, it will be enough for us to change the settings of only one object — and all the others will automatically adjust.
Personalization
Most likely, you enjoy the fact that your browser remembers your passwords and your smartphone recognizes your face. Imagine that soon your coffee machine will learn to make you strong black coffee in case you didn’t sleep well and cappuccino in case you indulged in a deep 9-hour sleep. Your home, car and other amenities will as if begin to read your thoughts and sensations.
Taking Care of Health and Environment
Some Internet of Things benefits connected to healthcare start to be available today. Our wearables collect information about our heart rate, blood pressure, duration of sleep and amount of consumed calories. This data can be transferred to our doctors, fitness trainers and nutritionists. Soon, health monitoring will become more accurate and pervasive. For specialists, it will become easier to prescribe us individual treatments or personalized preventive measures.
In smart cities of the next decades, thousands of sensors will be non-stop monitoring such vital parameters as air pollution, lighting level, traffic jams and so on. This data will be quickly analyzed and appropriate measures will be taken. Our cities will become safer, more comfortable and stress-free.
Fewer Bugs and Mistakes
In an ideal system, each anomaly should be timely detected. Actions should be undertaken to fix the issue as promptly as possible and prevent its recurrence. Today, this is not always possible.
In the future, the combination of IoT data, artificial intelligence and machine learning will enable us to practice multi-faceted controls over any system, be it urban transportation or website security. This should minimize the risks of bugs, errors and breakdowns and guarantee the smoothest functioning possible.
Vast Opportunities for Entrepreneurs
Talking about IoT benefits, we should emphasize its ability to collect impressive databases about businesses, on the one side, and their customers and operations, on the other side. This information will be quickly processed by powerful algorithms. As a result, business owners will get access to valuable insights at a minimal cost.
Fine-Tune Your Product
For companies, it would be much easier to cater to their target audience. They will be able to build and roll out new products or services more often. There should be fewer hit-or-miss solutions on the market because each commodity will be tailor-made for its potential consumers.
For instance, Custom Software Delivery companies will not need to wait for months to gather comprehensive feedback from the clients. The devices that their target audience uses will let the developers know:
- How much time people spend with their products
- Which functions they use most eagerly
- How often bugs tend to occur
- Other relevant statistics
Based on this information, developers will be able to improve their product on the go.
Impressive Prediction Capabilities
One of the most essential advantages of IoT consists in its ability to predict needs, trends and facts before they occur. Algorithms analyze large databases with statistics gathered during the previous years and make future forecasts. This will allow entrepreneurs to offer their clients value-added services and expand their audience.
For instance, you can task IoT with analyzing your interaction with your clients. A conventional algorithm would let you know how often customers request your product, which configuration of the product enjoys the greatest demand, what is your typical response to the clients’ requests and so on. The Internet of Things will also suggest new growth opportunities for your enterprise and forward-thinking methods to boost your profit. You will be able to implement these recommendations almost immediately.
The Flipside
Now that you know the main pros of the Internet of Things, you might wonder, should there be any cons? Сritics point at two main drawbacks of such a system.
The first vulnerability consists in drastic job cuts for human specialists. Machines and programs that outperform people will replace hundreds of thousands of workers, which might lead to a disaster in the labor market. To solve this problem, governments and companies should offer free professional retraining to employees whose occupations become redundant.
Second, we would become too dependent on our online connectivity. Once the system goes down, we will remain helpless, unable to use our usual amenities. For such occasions, experts should think of powerful backups.
Conclusion
Taking into account all the above-mentioned, it becomes obvious that the benefits of IoT outweigh its disadvantages. We should be optimistic about our near future but of course we will need to learn a lot. It will take us some time to get used to the new way of things — yet once we get accustomed, we will hardly look back.
