Taylor Davidson · The Internet of Things is about people, not things.

A couple weeks ago I gave a talk at Startup Iceland in Reykjavik about the Internet of Things, focusing on how the internet of things is evolving. The idea of sensors in our world connecting physical things to a network is an old concept that’s seeing new light, driven by an intersection between mobile on-demand services and internet-connected physical sensors, enabled by the rise of inexpensive sensors, smartphones, wearables, and the cloud.

It’s all exciting, but it’s also exposing some age-old questions between the value proposition of the Internet of Things and the control and privacy of data created by a network of connected sensors. Dumb sensors connected to a clever cloud can deliver valuable insights and interactions, but will people be comfortable sharing all their data to the cloud? The smartphone has emerged as the edge of the intelligent network, merging the value proposition of on-demand services and the Internet of Things, but how will the intelligent network develop alongside the smartphone network?

How will we see sensors provide functionality and value to people without sharing all data to the cloud? It will start with more processing of data at the sensor (and smartphone) layer, small data instead of big data, and more of a focus on using smart things to empower smart people.

That’s a quick summary of the talk, but I’d suggest you take the 16 minutes to get the full picture in the video + slides embedded above or on Vimeo >>

Video of the talk is on Vimeo, Internet of Things - Startup Iceland, and the slides are on Slideshare, The Internet of Things is about People - Startup Iceland. Research, quotes and links in the talk include posts by Tim O’Reilly, Matt Turck, Benedict Evans, Steve Schlafman, Steve Cheney, Maciej Ceglowski, and TrustE.