You probably think the Internet and your smartphone are all about you connecting with your friends. Not for long. Increasingly, the Internet is about objects talking with other objects. Sensors and actuators are popping up on more and more devices so they can monitor surroundings, share feedback and get instructions on what to do.
This is the next big trend on the Internet, and it will change your life. How big? Right now, more than 9 billion devices are connected to the Internet. That will rise to a trillion in the next decade, estimates McKinsey.
"At some point, the traffic among devices far exceeds the conversations among people and between people and devices, and that's fundamentally different," says Ed Schlesinger, the director of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University.
How will this help you? There will be "tremendous benefits" in terms of better security and energy savings, says Schlesinger, but the positives go way beyond that. Homes and cars will anticipate our needs, for example. "At some point, your car might sense that your normal route to work is congested and tell your alarm clock to wake you up early," says Schlesinger. Wow. Expect more advances in automation in factories and on farms, too.
You will be getting sensors, too -- to track your health, for example, and for creepier reasons. Already, companies are using devices from Sociometric Solutions that monitor employee tone of voice and posture, to gain insights into the workplace.
But what about privacy, the topic du jour, given reports from Washington about security surveillance? No worries, says Schlesinger: "The issue of privacy is resolved. There is no privacy. The understanding we had of privacy is gone."
Giants like Texas Instruments (TXN) and Intel (INTC) are major players in these technologies because they make sensors and the chips that power them. So are smaller pure plays on a variety of sensors and tracking devices, including Vishay Precision Group (VPG), SAIC (SAI) and InvenSense (INVN).
