At the Crossroads of Epochs
We are living in the amazing time. The situation now is similar to the events that took place almost 200 years ago — I mean the time before the industrial revolution. At that time the emergence and introduction of new technologies affected not only manufacturing processes, but also on the structure of society as a whole. Moreover, the changes undergone almost all aspects of life, causing the society evolve from agrarian to industrial.
And now we come to a remarkably similar historical point — new technologies are not just helping us, they are changing approaches to work in some areas of work. And after a few moments we are going to witness a new and inevitable scale of metamorphosis in life and society!
Just a few days ago a remarkable event occurred, the amount of mobile devices in the internet exceeded the amount of desktop ones! But that's not all. In 2015 there was only 4.9 billion internet-capable devices. By 2020, as experts predict, there will be over 40 billion!
Internet of Everything
The amount of data from network-connected devices now exceeds the amount of human-produced data. Further technology development and components cost reduction will lead to the rapid development of the Internet of Things — the concept, according to which network-capable devices will be able not only to collect and send data, but also analyze it and use it to change the world outside.
And, most important, all that will be possible completely without human intervention!
Stand alone machines will be able, for example, automatically take into account resource costs in production and predict their rational use. Recycling automation will optimize the amount of waste produced. All this will lead to significant savings in resources and operating expenses.
It will be possible to predict of the wear-out of resources and possible responses, which will allow you to take appropriate action before something bad will happen. This will raise the general level of Engineering Safety and reduce personnel requirements. The paradigm will change from preventative maintenance to maintenance according to actual condition.
The Challenges of Growth
But except the advantages of the Internet of Things, there are some difficulties we will face. In the first place, it is the centralized management model which we are currently using. When using a client-server logic there are quite strict requirements for stability and security. Data security and access rights management are becoming a hotter issue. And it's becoming more and more difficult to protect against tampering.
This leads to an increase in the cost of implementation and support and also causes serious problems with the system scaling. And in the future we won't be able to use a centralized model at all — any server will instantly become a bottleneck of the whole system!
At last until recently, a simple and effective method of providing interaction and data exchange for individual devices simply did not exist!
Decentralization as the Key to Survival
Blockchain — the decentralized database from the cryptocurrency world will come to help. Moreover it may become the key to the explosive growth of the entire technology!
The benefits of using a blockchain starts with the lack of need for a centralized server, a weak point, which is consumes resourses and attracts hackers.
Also blockchain provides high speed operation and the ability to easily scale the system, but the most important thing, blockchain provides a consensus, ie ensures that all devices will always have the latest and correct data. Without any ability to replace these data, steal it or block with a DDoS attack.
Finally blockchain allows to put in place a complete M2M-interaction. And devices will be able to exchange data with each other and analyze it faster and more efficiently without a centralized server, but using the power of a distributed network itself.
Today, according to many experts, only 0.1% of network-capable devices are connected to the network. This perfectly illustrates the huge potential that lies in this industry. And further IoT development can become the basis for the Fourth Industrial Revolution!