Five ways the IoT will change your life

The IoT is the key to bridging the gap between the real and virtual worlds

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a much-discussed subject, but many may wonder what it actually means for them as individuals in an increasingly connected world.

So we've rounded up the top five ways that the IoT will change your life, for better or worse.

5. Your home will be automated

So-called smart homes currently have a mix of connected devices that lack connectivity and merely communicate with a hub and with the owner through a smartphone app.

But as the IoT matures it will enable more machine-to-machine communications, allowing devices to communicate with each other rather than to one central hub.

For example, if a thermostat raises the heat of a room it could trigger a smart fridge to lower its temperature rather than waiting for the fridge to detect the temperature change and then turn on full power to cool down.

In effect, connected smart homes could make life easier, more efficient and better at saving energy.

Five ways the IoT will change your life

The IoT is the key to bridging the gap between the real and virtual worlds

4. Mundane tasks will be completed by robots

Administration tasks, printing, cleaning and fetching drinks are a pretty dull part of everyday work and life.

But the IoT could automate many of these tasks, such as fighting with Microsoft Excel data entry.

This could be taken further with artificial intelligence on top of IoT networks to oversee the management of dull tasks, and by sending robotic assistants to serve drinks in crowded bars or clean up spills in places like supermarkets.

All of which could free up employees to carry out more innovative work or at least leave work a little earlier, providing they are not replaced completely by autonomous systems.

Five ways the IoT will change your life

The IoT is the key to bridging the gap between the real and virtual worlds

3. Your car will be a smart hub on wheels

Cars are already stuffed full of computers, and many are gaining internet connectivity. As this trend continues our vehicles will effectively become hubs to control our smart homes and workplaces.

Voice recognition, smartphone connectivity, mobile cellular connections and built-in smart functions will allow cars to suck in information from connected devices and serve information to you in a digestible way.

And from the press of a few buttons or barked commands the car can order lights to be shut off, boilers to be fired up or remind you of an anniversary. The IoT is also a core component of bringing driverless cars onto roads.

Five ways the IoT will change your life

The IoT is the key to bridging the gap between the real and virtual worlds

2. You will be held accountable for everything you do

Cars and smart technology will be connected and will communicate with each other to make life easier for the user, but there's a flip side as people will be under increased surveillance from devices.

Such systems could monitor a worker's activity to see how productive they have been in a day, for example.

This could involve using smart CCTV to monitor a worker's path through the office to grab a Coke from a sensor-laden vending machine, which then feeds data to a central network.

The data is aggregated with other sources to determine whether the worker is a compulsive snack-addict. The smart network could then prompt the vending machine to go offline to the worker in question, forcing them to be healthier but foreshadowing a world where computers and machines rule our lives.

Five ways the IoT will change your life

The IoT is the key to bridging the gap between the real and virtual worlds

1. The internet will become part of the physical world

Putting aside the vast number of cables that connect the internet in the physical word, it is very much a digital and sometimes intangible thing.

But as more devices gain online connectivity, the internet will become part of the physical world in a more pronounced way.

This will become more obvious as virtual reality and augmented reality gather pace, mixing virtual assets and data pulled from the web with physical surfaces, objects and interfaces and effectively bringing the internet into your living room.

This could be seen as the next step in humanity's grasp of information and technology or the beginning of a journey into a world where the virtual and the real have collided so much that knowing the difference becomes a challenge.