Internet of Fings

Yes, yes…I know. It’s ‘things’. Stuff like that grinds you too? It’s just lazy. We have a language for a reason. Without it we can’t communicate. Surely hanging onto that is integral to our future…right?

A singular way in which to be connected is critical to our lives. Nearly every damaging situation almost always comes down to bad communication or a breakdown in the connection.

And so will be the relationship downfalls of the future of technology.

By now, everyone should be across the IOT. If not, then here’s a brief rundown in one sentence – connecting typically offline physical items to the internet to make them smarter and more useful. So for example, a fridge. Plug it into the internet, add some additional technology and suddenly it can start automatically making your grocery list for you. All based on usage, trends, brands, likes, dislikes, seasonality etc etc. Pretty powerful hey?

What makes the early evolutions of these technology changes is language. Every manufacturer seems to develop their own unique language which makes talking with other products more difficult. And while I am sure this is a mechanism of design to keep you within a brands suite of products (cue Apple and Samsung) it makes it difficult for consumers. Websites and browsers began understanding this quite early in the piece and it’s why we’ve seen protocols in place that ensure that we develop under a structured language setup. This still allows for additions, new languages and new ‘things’ to happen, but it also sets a structure.

As we move into a world which infuses so much more of our lives in technology, the integration of such scenarios will be vital to maximising the value of these opportunities. In terms of business, we’ve already seen this with each organisation having a number of different systems to run their business, often many without any integration.They all seem to talk a different language.

Bridging the gap between different technology systems and being able to congregate that data to better run, manage, drive and lift the performance of your business will be one of the most defining aspects of business growth in the next 5 years.

Manualisation or simply ignoring the data sets that are at your fingertips will be the difference between success and failure moving forward. ‘Fings’ are about to change.

And while it seems impossible to draw this together, we will see a shift in a single origin of language and connectors in the following years that will make this content more and more accessible. Enabling businesses to communicate easily and simply with their data.

So while your fridge will talk to your favoured shopping company and prefill your cart with ‘required’ items, begin to realise how this can powerfully impact upon your business and the connection with your customers. There are so many amazing opportunities coming…