What’s the Internet of Things (IoT)? | A Beginners’ Guide

7 min readMar 29, 2021

Like many other future technologies, the term Internet of Things (or IoT) has become a buzzword in recent years. IoT first of all describes everything with an Internet connection. Things communicate directly with each other — Machine-to-Machine (M2M) — without the need for human intervention.

According to business insiders, by 2026 there will be over 64 billion interconnected things. Our data growth will increase exponentially through IoT, and in 2025 it will be about 175 Zettabytes, eight times more than in 2017.

The goal of this transformation is to make physical environments accessible to digital computers. As a result, an incredible number of processes and everyday situations can be completely reinterpreted and redesigned. One of the best-known examples is probably the refrigerator, which automatically reorders food as soon as it is used up. But IoT contains so much more and will change our future massively.

“Everything is being wired up or connected wirelessly — architecture, energy efficient sensing, secure networks, quality of service, new protocols, participatory sensing, data mining, GIS based visualization, cloud computing, and international activities. It simply means that powerful information will be at our fingertips.” — Mehul Nayak in Tech.com

It can therefore be said with little risk that in the future almost everything will come into contact with IoT.

In this guide we will look at current and future applications of IoT. We look in detail at why it will play a central role in the lives of future generations. To understand the technology, we will also take a trip down history and look at the start-ups and cities that are already working on our future today. Have fun!

Summary: IoT as a tool for the future

In the Internet of Things, devices communicate directly with each other over the Internet (M2M); this allows tasks and processes to be automated without the intervention of humans.
The applications of IoT range from smart homes and fully automated industrial plants to self-care autonomous vehicles.
Different technological standards, expandable online security and lack of data protection and privacy regulations are some areas on which our lawmakers and modern IoT companies should focus.
IoT works hand in hand with a variety of different new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, blockchain or Cloud & Edge Computing as they complement each other.
Applications of IoT will change almost all areas of our lives. Be it in Smart Cities, mobility or Industry 4.0.

Advantages and disadvantages of the Internet of Things

So far so good. So with the Internet of Things, in which almost all machines communicate with each other, we will collect lots of new data. But how can this enrich our lives?

The IoT promises to make our everyday lives massively easier. When devices communicate directly with each other, we can spend our time on more important issues. Unimportant processes become automated and more efficient. Thinking about the future from the perspective of the Internet of Things, our future grandchildren are likely to shake their heads at us just as we do from time to time with our — less tech-savvy — grandparents.

What follows are three future scenarios for IoT applications that have the potential to transform their fields in a whole new way.

Never face closed doors again

Whether you’re standing in front of it with your heavy shopping bags or you’ve foolishly left your keys stuck inside. Almost everyone has probably been annoyed by unlocking doors at some point. In the smart homes of the future, the IoT combined with artificial intelligence (more precisely: face recognition technology) will turn your own face into the key. In addition, in the future you will be able to give your friends or family members, but also the letter carrier, remote access to your own four walls.

Queuing in stores

With a five-minute wait, three shopping trips per week and a life expectancy of 70 years, we spend 910 hours (38 days) of our lives in the shopping queue alone. In the future, we won’t have to wait in line because sensors will tell systems which items we’re looking at and which of them we’re picking up. This science fiction scenario can already be experienced at Amazon Go stores in Seattle and Chicago.

Broken vehicle parts

Sensor technology not only enables vehicles to monitor the condition of important components, smart systems can also include expected use or dates such as the upcoming weekend trip in their predictions and book a workshop appointment in advance — before the damage occurs in the vehicle (#predictiveMaintenance). In exchange with the car, the workshop’s systems can directly request the right spare parts and, if necessary, inform the insurance company.

There are countless other possible applications. The potential to make our everyday lives easier is enormous and the implementation of the first projects is likely to happen very quickly over the next few years/decades.

The downside of the IoT

The basis of all these applications is data! And lots of it. This inevitably leads to a number of downsides that are no secret and yet are far from being resolved by the industry.

First of all, the industry has quite few standards. Manufacturers build their own solutions, which usually makes it impossible for consumers to connect multiple systems. At the same time, the great advantage of the Internet of Things in making everyday life easier only arises with centralized control. No one wants to have to use multiple systems separately. If you look at what will probably be one of the most common IoT applications in 2020 — controlling smart home lighting via a voice assistant — you quickly find that some providers are not compatible with others.

Second, the Internet of Things relies on a strong and fail-safe network. Slow Internet connections or complete network outages can disable systems. Interconnected cars would no longer receive information in the event of a failure. People would no longer be able to enter/exit their homes or use everyday devices like their heaters. Not to mention that by 2020, 3.4 billion people (44% of the world’s population) will still be living without Internet access. So the first step is to get global coverage, while the second step should be to upgrade to a fast standard like 5G. This makes the topic a focus not only for governments, but also for the companies of tomorrow. Google’s Project Loon offers an interesting approach to a solution.

The most serious challenge, however, is cybersecurity. According to a study by digital security company Gemalto, 48% of companies using IoT cannot tell when their network has been compromised. That smart devices, with all their different standards, are also usually an easy target for hackers is openly obvious online.

“IoT devices have been conscripted into massive botnets, compromised for nation-state reconnaissance, hacked to mine cryptocurrency, and manipulated in assaults on power grids.” — WIRED

The issue is mainly based on the fact that in the past, both companies and ruling parties paid too little attention to the security, of networked objects. As a result, there was no (political) pressure on manufacturers to develop common security standards. This is likely to change in the future before the Internet of Things is finally completely adapted by the majority of people.

The issues of privacy and data protection must also be viewed critically. Voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa are repeatedly criticized for recording and using data without the consent of their users. If the IoT collects more and more data about us in the future, it should be clearly regulated who controls it. According to an IoT privacy study by Northeastern University and Imperial College London, experts found in 34,586 experiments that 71 out of 81 IoT devices from well-known manufacturers (including Amazon and Google) shared data with third parties. However, new technologies such as blockchain would allow users to view their data and prevent its misuse. Whether this will be implemented, however, may be doubted. In the networked future of things, however, strict and clear restrictions are needed, the creation and control of which is likely to become a central task in the coming years.

Cool Stuff

The American nerd TV series The Big Bang Theory shows in a playful way what not only techies can already look forward to with the Internet of Things. Always fun!

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