Gadgetory

imagine for a moment trying to explain the internet to someone from many generations ago um I'm not getting a signal here but that's exactly what I had the chance to do and not by using a time machine but by going to prison for real you see for five years I worked as a correctional officer here at kingston penitentiary which is now a museum and most of my job was doing this escorting inmates to the hospital for surgery and treatment and I once escorted an inmate who was a lifer he had been in the institution for many decades and not only had he never had a chance to touch the Internet he never got his paws on one of these I get it so after seeing my partner watched the hockey game on his laptop via the hospital Wi-Fi he asked the inevitable question hey boss what is the internet and how does it work so I did my best to explain how computers and servers connected together on our original telephone line system to allow for a near free and open media communication where one person could reach known to people for virtually nothing and the more I talked the more excited I got and his response huh you see he had no frame of reference no matter how much i simplified it it was very difficult for him to grasp anything that was not radio waves and broadcast television in the end he was still looking for the outlet that we plugged into to get into internet which is why I believe that many of us have not really commented much on the next big leap forward because we don't have much of a frame of reference but just imagine for a moment how much the internet has dramatically changed the lives of everyone on the planet directly or at least indirectly it's mind-boggling so what is the next big leap forward well I've talked about in the past and here are the hints that I gave in the past we were hard this one was embedded in a tablet to make it look like an app and this one was embedded on a webpage to make it look like an ad now of course the biggest hint by far was last week when I talked about how the next big leap forward would mean doing away with our beloved phones all together you see when the internet emerged more than 20 years ago it was a miraculous thing you can now connect to anyone anywhere anytime for almost nothing but it was restricted or bottlenecked through a desktop computer but now we have mobile phones and that same access is now in our pocket but what if we could just do away with all these devices and the internet was everywhere on everything and that's where we come to the next big leap forward being the Internet of Things when everything has its own IP address everything can be tracked and communicate with everything else sending data to and fro we will then have oceans of data infinitely more than we have now and then we'll be able to build what some call the DI KW pyramid you see at the bottom of this pyramid you have unprecedented data that must be processed through to information than to knowledge and ultimately to wisdom now allow me to walk you through a day in the life of the Internet of Things when you wake up in the morning your home automation will have already noticed the drop in temperature and therefore raise the heat up in your house and as you rise out of bed in the morning coffee will be less likely out of milk because your refrigerator would have already known that and ordered milk via your amazon prime account you won't be caught texting and driving either because oh yeah your messages now shown safely on your window shields HUD display and no need to rush to me the ferry because you've already been notified the ferry will be five minutes late everything from tracking our water main system to prevent blockages to even tracking our garbage and supply chains to better reduce waste we are now growing a world central nervous system that we can take advantage of now Google is very bullish on the Internet of Things but what does that mean for our beloved android android is now at the forefront of the Internet of Things not just with Android wear and Android auto and with nest but Android runs a Linux kernel which is better suited for this world of the Internet of Things and has already become a favorite among embedded system developers who often build on arm-based rather than intel chips now for those of you who need further convincing google was very explicit at Google i/o about what role they want to play in the internet of things we see a world of sensors sensors can be small and powerful and gather a lot of information that can be useful to our users we want to build the right AP is for this world of sensors so let's talk about the winners of this contest in at the beginning I try to make it clear that I was looking for people who understand what kind of impact this one's going to have in our lives so here's two people I thought began to grasp the impact of what this means the runner up with a t-shirt is ESRI odd who is one of the first people to give an intelligent answer but the winner of the fifty-dollar google play gift card has got to beef is 135 who demonstrated an understanding that the secret to the next big leap forward is to free ourselves from our devices all together thanks for watching android army my name is Jace love to connect with you here on Google+ or Twitter please let me know in the comments if you think I'm completely full of it I would love to hear an intelligent response if you think I'm wrong explain why what else could be the next big leap forward or is this not something in the next five to 10 years this is 30 years away could I be way off let me know what you think I will be reading those comments don't forget about my brother's nandroid jaws gentleman test ninja Kevin Lana and Chris are working really hard to deliver the best android content on the web see you next week on a dry day