IoT (Internet of Things) is getting a lot of hype these days and people are talking about it; let us try to know IoT in simple words and see how it can change the world around us.

In simple words IoT is the interconnection of different type of devices (Any device) with humans and with each other, for examples your watch may alert your health care provider when your sugar level is rising beyond some specific value consequently your vital signs are sent to your family doctor and based on his response insulin is injected to your body to lower the sugar level, this all process may occur without any human intervention as your family doctor may be an AI (Artificial Intelligence) and not a human doctor.

Basically IoT is not something new, it is an advance level of automation, monitoring and control, the idea of automation in Industry dates back to around 1950s by General Motors; however the rapid advancement in technology is pushing this highly sophisticated industrial revolution towards common user and making it as ubiquitous as the basic right to food and clean water.

As a matter of fact the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals developed in 2015 also call for an IoT enabled world as most of the 17 SGD goals need interaction between human and environment in a way that is more efficient and optimized in terms of resource usage and the goals like “Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure”, “Affordable Clean Energy”, “Good Health and Wellness” and “Responsible Consumption and Production” need a well connected society.

GSMA (A trade body that represents the interests of mobile network operators worldwide) closely follows these goals as the mobile industry is the first industry that has committed to these SDGs to improve the life of the people of our planet.

Now let us discuss some use cased of IoT that once fully implemented will change the life of the people around the world.

Consider using some popular website to order a pizza in the IoT enabled world; based on your order the Pizza will be prepared on a 3D Food printer (The idea is under development by NASA for astronauts) and will be sent to you via a drone who locates you based on your location as shared by your mobile phone and delivers you the pizza, oven hot J. As this whole process will be free of any human intervention so the hygiene of the food can be guaranteed with a very high quality and wastage will be minimum.

As another example consider you are driving a car on highway and your watch is constantly checking your fuel gauge and the distance of the nearest petrol station and it alerts you as soon it estimates that if you missed the next petrol pump then you will not be able to make it to the next one, so in the case the human error issue will be minimized to almost zero

As my last example; imagine you have a very busy schedule and not able to get time to order the groceries on time and as your fridge sensed that it almost empty now so it orders a pre-stored list of groceries to your online grocery store which is automatically paid through your wallet and as you reach your home after a long day you find your groceries just delivered as the online stores estimated your arrival through your map application.

There are millions of possible applications of IoT in our world and a lot can be written for or against this change however the fact is that around 30,000 companies are already working in some IoT domain and it is soon going to be a trillion dollar industry now. The time is now to embrace this change and put our efforts to use this awesome technology in enhancing the improving the life of the people around us.