C R E D I T T K

sions. For example, farmers could determine the going rate for their crops, rather than relying on a third-party intermediary to determine prices. Knowing what the weather is going to be like in a few days to make decisions about farming practices, and so on. That being said, having access to information for education and training and awareness doesn’t replace having access to clean water and very basic needs.

One problem in a lot of the developing world is that much of the Internet traffic is routed back through more developed areas; traffic in South America being routed through Miami, or traffic in Africa going through Amsterdam or London, etc. So there is a missed opportunity to host local content locally. For example, if you’re in Kenya, a local Kenyan website will be hosted outside of Kenya, making it very expensive and slow to get information. What we are starting to see more are efforts to have Internet exchange points in the region so that the multiple network providers within Africa and within South America can directly connect with one another and provide a stable platform for hosting of local content.

For organizations and individuals to be confident when conducting transactions and exchanging information, the Internet has to be secure. How does the Io T impact the security of the Internet?

JIM KUROSE: With an ever-increasing array of devices being connected to the Internet (between 26 billion and 50 billion devices in manufacturing, business, and home applications by 2020, by some predictions), the question of resilience—knowing that a device will continue to perform its tasks safely and securely in the presence of unintended as well as malicious faults—is increasingly important.

VINT CERF: There are technologies that allow people to protect themselves better. Two-factor authentications are a good example of that—the best practice of which is to encrypt everything from the laptop or mobile all the way to the server on the net. All of these are practices we adopt at Google.

NICK FEAMTSER: There are a couple
of reasons why IoT raises the stakes
as far as the security of the Internet is
concerned. An Internet attack may now
involve physical inconveniences or
threats such as security cameras, door
locks, thermostats, etc.

The issue here is that most businesses are fundamentally focused on the market they serve. In other words, a hardware company is just a hardware company, a consumer electronics company is just a consumer electronics company. They are not thinking about the security of the software they put on the devices they sell. So it won’t be long until we have an abundance of fundamentally un-patchable, insecure, and difficult if not impossible-to-patch devices affecting nearly every aspect of our daily lives. It’s a perfect storm.

ERIC BREWER: Even though “ less-con-nected devices” sounds paradoxical in today’s scenario, I believe it’s an option. As an example, if a device has to connect through the user’s phone or home laptop or computer, maybe that is a bit safer because then, at least, the gateway could be secured. Another option is to stop making these devices so flexible. They are really just doing one kind of reporting, and all the rest of the data is in the cloud. It’s more plausible that you could make that secure.

What makes security hard is if you are trying to have a lot of flexibility in the device, or complexity, or if you’re trying to change what the device is doing over time, and that’s why you’re having upgrades. All this makes it much more like a phone and then it really needs to have a more automated form of security patching.

What are the possibilities, and repercussions, of Io T capabilities such as smart cities and connected cars?

MARTIN CASADO: There are obvious answers here around energy efficiency, traffic, safety, etc. But I feel that those are already easy to see from where we are today. So perhaps I will take a bit of a longer view and say that in the limit Io T could very well make the notion of a city anachronistic. Cities are largely products of organic growth and physical constraints; close enough for protection and commerce, and far enough away for privacy and access to resources. However, IoT changes these constraints.

Drones can deliver goods without
requiring traditional roads or supply
routes. Advances in connected and
urban farming can allow sustain-
ability just about anywhere. And the
Internet provides a social overlay that
is independent of geography. We are
heading toward a future where cities
are more defined by common inter-
ests than by geography.

What do you think are some of the potentially most exciting/important applications of Io T beyond the ones already being actively developed?

JIM KUROSE: It’s difficult to predict future Internet applications. But I’ll make one prediction. I believe education and skill acquisition have yet to be truly disrupted by the Internet, or by interactive and/or virtual reality/ augmented reality technologies. As a long-time teacher (and learner), I don’t think there is anything as good as learning with inspired and engaged teachers and students, using interactive learning and team-based activities in the classroom. But that approach is neither uniformly affordable nor scalable. So I do believe a next generation of interactive soft-ware/textbooks/classes is increasingly important to meet the pace and need for training, skills updating, and acquiring new fundamentals.

GEORGE ROUSSOS: One specific way that I hope the IoT can bring about change is by shifting the emphasis away from our current predominantly visual mode of interaction with information, which I consider to be the key ingredient enabling a sedentary and passive contemporary lifestyle. IoT technologies afford interactions engaging the whole body through touch, proprioception, equilibrioception, in-teroception, and perhaps a few new artificial senses that can hopefully rebalance the focus on the brain as the only locus of intelligence.

In particular, my hope is that the Io T will play a key role toward improving the health and the sustainability of the planet: overconsumption of raw materials, pollution from fossil fuels, and industrialized farming, the destruction of forests and numerous other effects of modernity are setting massive challenges ahead. I believe the Io T has to play a central role in addressing these challenges and ensuring the welfare of future generations.

 

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