It’s still yet to be explained why a world in which a computer controls your thermostat is grand thingDay by day,appliance by appliance, “the internet of things” – that utopian notion that one day all objects, and people and data will be interconnected online – quietly works its way into our quotidian routines,the clicks and whirrs of gleaming automata replacing that gurgling noise your dad used to make when he couldn’t procure the VCR to stop blinking “00:01”. As Wired magazine and those Apple adverts where people dance to vintage soul in converted loft spaces hold cheerfully telling us, this march of progress into our homes should be regarded as a “good thing”. Yet surely I’m not alone in feeling utterly sodding terrified by the potential applications of this internet of things.Take Hive, and the app that allows you to remotely tweak the temperature of your home via your smartphone. On the face of it,it’s a elegant puny time-saver. But already I’ve envisaged a scenario where terrorists use Hive to hack into a skyscraper’s central heating unit and boil everyone inside. (assume John McClane‘s going to save them? assume again: he burned to a crisp while crawling through an air duct.) Hive recognises such luddite concerns.
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Source: theguardian.com