Panel
Digital Future: The Internet of Things
Milken InstituteAlex, David Levinson, Bridget, Kathleen Murphy, Mark, Gary, Michael, Shirley Moody, Dan Galpin, Margaret Burns, John McCutchan
- The Internet of Things is projected to be a fundamental industrial transformation with market dynamics potentially reaching 50 billion to 100 billion connected devices by 2020, with IPv6 theoretically supporting up to 78 octillion connections.
- A 70-30 ratio between industrial and consumer IoT applications is expected for the next three years, driven by "unsexy" sectors like smart transportation, energy, and manufacturing, while healthcare faces slower adoption due to legacy infrastructure despite being a major market.
- Significant economic impacts include $15 million in savings for SIA Trucking from a 6% fuel efficiency increase and a reported million-dollar savings for a Manhattan client detecting a water leak, alongside broader goals to address carbon emissions, hunger, and resource management.
- Technological advancements include a 20-fold reduction in storage costs and a 60-fold reduction in compute costs over the last decade, enabling real-time edge analytics and narrow AI to process data locally before cloud transfer.
- Security risks are anticipated to shift from consumer wearables to critical infrastructure, specifically SCADA systems, industrial controls, and essential services like healthcare, air traffic, and 911, with concerns regarding the inability to patch legacy firmware and the physical constraints on implantable medical devices.
- The ecosystem will likely consolidate around open, neutral platforms (potentially led by companies like Samsung and Intel) rather than proprietary silos, with wireless standards like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Thread becoming dominant while early proprietary protocols fade.
- Device architectures are evolving toward sensors placed on various body parts or implanted internally, with low-power sensors capable of running for two years on coin cells, and a focus on building security principles into silicon at the onset.
- Market participants expect new alliances, competitive overlaps, and a vast developer community to emerge, with governments potentially acting as revenue generators through regulation or surveillance, including biometric systems in regimes like China, Syria, and Iran.
- Business models are predicted to evolve where insurance companies subsidize IoT costs for safer premiums and where market dynamics determine pricing mechanisms, while the industry navigates the challenge of having data production exceed current processing chip capabilities.
- Near-term opportunities include smart retail for interactive shopping and smart homes, while long-term predictions suggest the 21st century will experience the equivalent of 20,000 years of change due to exponential technological acceleration, starting from the earliest stages of this future.