Jamillah Knowles of The Next Web recently explained why 2013 will be the year of the Internet of Things. Knowles writes, “This year’s Le Web event in Paris was based around the theme of the Internet of Things (IoT); the way in which objects around us will gather data and connect to controls or other machines via the Internet… There are still issues that need to be bashed out of course, proprietary technologies and closed data systems don’t do much to help things along. Privacy, security and networks are also in need of further consideration. However, products like the Fitbit or Fuelband are already becoming commonplace and makers are experimenting with remote systems like Lockitron for front doors and Growerbot for watering house plants.”

Knowles goes on, “It’s important to consider where data is coming from when thinking about IoT. A lot of the useful data we might use personally, naturally comes from us. So, not so much an internet of things as an internet of people – with things that gather data. DJ Patil, a data scientist with Greylock Partners, gave a talk at Le Web about how we could be using data to improve ourselves. ‘It should be the Internet of nouns,’ he told The Next Web. ‘A noun being a person, place or thing. When we think about ourselves, we  create data – things like our temperature, perspiration, our heart rate, can all be measured. So the way we instrument ourselves can help us to understand more about ourselves’.”

Read more here.

Image: Courtesy Cisco