In the Future, Everything is Connected to the Net (Even Cows) Michael Lim July 18, 2011 Extras According to website, Bit Rebels, the future of the Internet and more specifically, who or what is using it may not be quite as we imagine it today. The Internet as we know it has been growing at an exponential rate. According to statistics gathered by Cisco, 20 current day typical households with broadband internet access generates as much or more Internet traffic than the entire world did in 2008. Think about that for a second… really, take your time. The helpful infographic shows that in 2003, as consumer internet access was starting to take off, the number of people using the Internet vastly outnumbered the number of things connected to it. However, the tipping point was reached around 2009 and one year later, more things were connected to the Internet than there were people on Earth. As we move toward the close of this decade, the number of things connected to the Internet will exceed the number of people by around 8:1. What sorts of things are being connected to the Internet? Well, cows, for one. Typically, sensors that gather remote data and transmit it back to a base station will probably make up a fairly sizeable part of future Internet traffic. According to Cisco, sensors that monitor the health and well being of cattle will annually generate around 200MB of data per cow. Holy COW! As farming and agriculture become more and more scientific, we can imagine the number of sensors being deloyed to monitor crops and livestock will only increase. And as more devices become Internet aware, they will start to communicate with each other and operate in unison to make all our lives easier and more efficient. According to Cisco, all your personal gadgets in the future will know your daily schedule, from your coffee maker to your car and they will intelligently communicate with each other and start up at the optimal time to make sure we don’t miss any important engagements. Given this account, somehow the robot apocalypse doesn’t seem all that bad. Source: Bit Rebels Share This With The World!
