Discussion on:

The cloud is fundamental to the Internet of Things

very little effect on the cloud itself as M2M is not a useful cloud technology due to the high costs in most of the world (per MB download / upload rates make it expensive), IP address issues, and bandwidth issues; then you get to add in privacy and hacking security concerns. However, for use in a local area network for monitoring manufacturing process, patients and movements within a campus area, this would be a great advantage as all the cloud concerns are gone or reduced.

Why is this good for me?

" Its good for you if your refrigerator automatically orders your groceries."

It saves you having to do it. Just like Face Book and Twitter allow you to tell the world the colour of your underwear and the size of the last dump that you had.

Your Fridge will be able to reorder replacments for what's gone off while remaining unused and your Toaster will be capable of ordering bread when it feels the need or after making so many slices of Toast. After all a Smart Toaster was designed and exists to be Smart and save you time with the Mundane things that so many people can not be bothered with.

Also you'll have no security at all so it increases Good Behaviour as all your wrong doings will be on Public Display for all to see so you'll not do anything wrong. Just like that guy from Face Book tells you that his offering is good because it encourages you to not do anything wrong.

When you are Perfect you have no need to worry about anything bad happening to you as those Nasty Bad People will avoid you like the Plague and go after the easier targets. Honest. Its also better if you dont think about things like this as it taxes your brain too much so just leave it to your Fridge to keep enough food in the house to keep you feed.

Of course when your Talking Toaster starts to annoy you because it continually wants to cook you some toast you can resort to the Analog Baseball Bat and smash it up completely, but then you would have to remember to order your bread so you can have some toast. [/Magical Laughter]

Col

The refrigerator example is only one of the oldest, simplest analogies in explaining M2M technology -- it gets across the concept of machines talking to each other, taking an action -- all without human intervention. I don't think Thoran is suggesting that intelligent fridges are going to make the world a better place!

Here is a great example of M2M in action and doing something that would be very hard to monitor otherwise:
Tracking trees: How M2M is being used to prevent deforestation in Brazil
http://gigaom.com/2013/01/17/tracking-trees-how-m2m-is-being-used-to-prevent-deforestation-in-brazil

Better than the refridgerator is the vending machine example. A man owns 50 vending machines, and has a route where he goes machine to machine restocking as needed. But he doesn't know except from experience, which machines more urgently need filling, and he doesn't know which items are out of stock. Those vending machines could easily send information to a central server(in his stock room) and an app on the server create a pick list for replacements and even a route to make the best use of his time.

Who said any of this is good for you? It's good for the grocery and the milk producer. All the rest is sugar coating.

This is a drive by various vendors impose yet another layer or middleman that can charge you for a service. Then they can use your data to data mine and sell the information.

All you are seen as is a consumer and they have yet another product they want to sell to you.

Aside from the fact that they can't get sensors that work 100% reliably yet, let alone with the data they send to the applications, or the apps themselves... To return to the refrigerator analogy. what if you're going on vacation for two weeks, and likely forget to tell the fridge?

Or even worse, what will be the ultimate result of this?
http://www.rjthinks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/walle-e-humans-in-the-spaceship.jpg

If it is supposed to be the world.
Just sayin.