I'm not sure when this happened but it seems something in every room in our house needs internet access. When I built our house about 11 years ago, and being as I'm a geek, I installed 4 cat 5 and 2 Coax cables in every single room of the house. If any of you have ever built a house the one thing that you say or is said to you over and over is "It's much easier to do now than after it's built". 11 years later we use almost none of that cable.
You see a short 11 years ago there was exactly zero broadband penetration where I live (see my bio). I used a dial up modem for the first couple of years which only required a phone line, wasn't persistent and couldn't easily be distributed throughout the house. A couple of years after moving in I could get satellite internet which was an improvement but was metered and had a lot of latency (a long time to connect). Finally a wireless provider gave us a somewhat lackluster 1MB of internet which is enough to watch netflix as long as NO ONE else tries to look at or even think about surfing the internet. You should see the fights in our house when someone is trying to stream video.
And yet...even so my house have morphed into a digital command center. Here's what I can recall that "needs" internet access.
-- Nest thermostat
-- DirectTV receiver
-- Blueray player
-- Apple TV
-- Apple iMac.
-- Two Dropcams for security
-- 3 laptops
-- wii
-- Ooma telephone service
-- Withings scale
-- 4 iPhones
-- Xbox 360
-- 4 ipads
-- 3 Nest Smoke Alarms
That's 29 devices that i can think about and it seems as it's happened without my knowledge. What I mean is obviously each device I knew needed some kind of connectivity but if you asked me how many things in my house had a connection I would have guessed about 10. And that's the thing about the "internet of things" it happens without you knowing, before you realize it every appliance, everything that has power is better with a connection to the internet. Wifi was one of those technologies no one really saw coming. I mean if you knew it was coming why would you overwire your house?
I'm happy with my connected home. When I'm away my thermostat conserves energy, and I can set the temp from my phone as I start home. My nest smoke alarms can alert me of smoke on my phone and I can get a live view of my house using dropcam to see why. I get notified as soon as someone walks in the door on my iPhone and can track my weight over the past 2 years with an app. Slowly with every new thing I buy it just seems a little bit better if it's connected to the internet, and before you know it the internet of things is critical to my home.
That's the thing with most technology at first it seems like a very small improvement but brick upon brick, block upon block, wifi connection upon wifi connection you realize how important it's become. I imagine with electricity the ability to not have to light the lamps was nice but not revolutionary. However, after adding refrigeration, television, washer and dryers, kitchen appliances, heat and air, and wifi all the sudden power was critical to daily life, just like the internet is becoming.
Stop and count, how many devices do you have?
I'm building a startup called ServiceVines. I live far out from civilization and like it. I get really too excited over tech, economics, and food.