Fascinating world of IOTs

A doctor examines a patient in a small town referred by a primary health center situated in a remote area. The doctor gets alarmed by certain pathological condition of the patient and feels that the health condition of the patient is complex and needs to consult aspecialist sitting several hundred kilometers away. He calls up the doctor at the primary health center and then the specialist. Now all the three are in the loop. He downloads the Aadhar based health profile of the patient from the Internetand sends it to other two doctors. They use Skype for interaction and come to a conclusion as to what should be the course of treatment. Distance that separates the three doctors do not come in the way for holding conference and saves a life, which was in great danger.

There are many situations, which one can visualize. When I am explaining such situations, a person connected with Internet and its multiple uses might concede that I am not driving home broad contours of a rocket science. These are possible realms of now widely used concept of Internet of Things (IOT), which have made possible many things, which used to be unthinkable some decades back.  What made these things possible? The short and crypt answer is chips, sensors, beacons, drones and the list of such devices is expanding with every passing day. 

Friends, that is the way technology is growing and to put it mildly by leaps and bounds. What we feel impossible todaywill become possible tomorrow. How such things are happening? It cannot happen in a vacuum.  There should be definitive efforts to make things happen in a seamless way. Research and development hold the key to unraveling the mysteries of the world. For any technology, there are two sides: human and abstract. Human dimensions help us to discern how any technology can be put to use for the welfare of the people. Then comes the abstract aspect, which decides how the new technology has helped us to move up in the value chain. The generation or finesse of the technology may not be relevant to the people who use it. They measure the value of new technology in terms of the easiness at which it can be operated, end results and how far it reduced shortcomings of the earlier technologies. Another important link is the commercialization of technologies. That should be at best defined as a way to ensure that it reaches the common man at an affordable price. Acceptability of digital technology lies in its affordability and scalability.  As the culture of IOTs picks up and more gadgets are marketed to the masses, their prices will come down and their uses would spill over to every household irrespective of their income levels.

There are think tanks and futuristic groups, which are predicting what future holds for digital technology. Some of them come with bizarre predictions with the advent of artificial intelligence. What the human can do now, machines will be able to do tomorrow. You have driverless cars, pilotless aircrafts, robots doing most complicated surgery, machines imparting education to suit intelligence level of each student etc. The extreme prediction is that creation of designer children with the help of genome. That would mean one can chose what could be the level of intelligence, color, disposition etc of the baby they want to procreate. 

The flip side of these developments, I am afraid, would be inequality among people living in different parts of the globe. People who are fortunate to be affluent will have all these facilities on asking, while those who cannot afford it, might lose on the game, unless there are global initiatives to plug the imminent digital divide that may creep in.

This example can be taken at a global scale. There are many countries which are primitive as far as the digital technology is concerned. These benefits will flow to people of these countries only when a strong infrastructure is built and people use broadband, mobile phones etc. That will take considerable time and  efforts. Yet, a beginning has to be made. We have a number of institutionalized frameworks created under UN organizations for compliance of standards, promotion of local entrepreneurship, rule based trading, promoting   small and medium enterprises etc. I still have to hear  about a global organization dedicated to increase the computer literacy and its application  globally. Even if there is one, I have not heard about its working. It is important for UN organizations to embark on a strong network of organizations to promote computer applications  across the world committing resources and manpower to achieve that goal. This cannot be left to private players since it would rake up many controversies like the one triggered by free use of internet. Hidden in that concept, it is alleged, was some smart move  by Facebook to capture expanding horizon of India’s digital space.

What could be the glitch in a digitally connected world? Hacking or intimidating the system unlawfully for stealing data or corrupting the existing data is a matter of great concern. It has left a big question mark among the people who swear by the digital world. How far Internet can be reliable and what is the guarantee that it would make the systems transparent? 

There are protagonists of net who finds the widespread hacking as an opportunity. They argue that the answer to hacking is creation of strong security systems to make hacking impossible or near impossible. That opens up businesses worth trillions of dollars for creating foolproof firewalls that cannot be compromised. That is also an area India can have tremendous opportunities to develop new technological platforms that are impenetrable.  We have to invest handsomely in this domain to move up in the value chain.

Advent of IOTs  has opened up a challenge to India. We have to make our presence felt in the embedded technologies. But the fact is that we are yet to travel some way to get close to marking our footprints in the embedded technologies, which should have been our forte having regard to the fact that we had a solid start in software development and solutions. IOTs work on chips, sensors and beacons. Our laggardness in this domain is matter of great concern.  Let me dole out some statistics. China is one of the largest producers of  electronics hardware and their yearly export of this item alone is higher than the overall export of India. India’s production of  electronics hardware is a miniscule as compared to that of China. Mapping of our inadequacies in the hardware sector needs immediate attention. It is not an easy task. For the last decade or so we have been embarking one plan or the other to attract global majors to invest in India but with very little success. The irritants  that prevent us from going ahead should be carefully looked into and ameliorative actions taken urgently so that we do not miss the bus this time around.

Undeniably IOT is a game changer and that is going to be the case for some time now, whether we like it or not till the next generation of technology eclipse the existing ones. It is time for India to catch up with the big changes that are happening to consolidate our position and to emerge as a true technology leader in the times to come.