The Life-Changing Promise of Real-Time Data

If you find yourself shopping for a new car in 2016, don’t be surprised when the salesperson spends more time touting in-car connectivity than horsepower.

He or she probably knows what a recent Accenture report revealed, which is that most potential car buyers now value in-car technology more than the car’s driving performance.

Life Changing Promise Real Time Data

The car’s infotainment center is becoming the new hot mobile device. But while you may be intrigued by today’s connected car offerings such as Wi-Fi, back-seat entertainment and over-the air map updates, starting in 2016 the car driving experience will be truly transformed.

And the #Bigidea driving that is real-time data:  the ability to obtain information virtually instantaneously from a wide variety of connected devices.

The Life-Changing Promise of Real-Time Data

  • Real-time data is what will help make connected cars safer in the future. Semi-autonomous cars or autonomous vehicles will be able to share real-time data with other vehicles on the road as well as with street lights and other traffic control infrastructure.  That will afford a level of awareness to traffic conditions that’s far superior to what our eyes and rear-view mirrors can provide.
  • Real-time data will help allow your connected car to talk to your connected home and alert it that you are a mile away so it can adjust the A/C to your preferred setting and turn the lights on from the garage to your home office—if that is your usual entry path.
  • Real-time data coming from connected sensors in cargo containers today allow a shipping company to help ensure the contents arrive in perfect condition. Art and artichokes have different tolerance levels for temperature and humidity fluctuations. Being able to adjust those settings based on real-time information no matter where in the world the container happens to be is a huge advantage for shipping companies.
  • Real-time data may save your life one day after some of the work being done in labs today becomes available to us as individuals. I’m talking, as an example, of a nanosensor, smaller than a grain of sand, implanted in your body and traveling through your bloodstream, that may be able to detect cancer after the first few cells are formed and alert you on your smartphone or connected watch.
  • Real-time data will do wonders for the environment. Imagine if we were able to react to spills and hazardous conditions in real time and alert the appropriate authorities. Connected sensors can help do that. They can provide real-time information about rivers and streams. They can trigger quick responses to spills and leaks before they become catastrophic. They can help save water in agriculture by dispensing water only when needed and where it’s needed. In short, they can monitor water, land, and air in ways that we have never been able to monitor before.

We are at the dawn of a new era, the era of the connected life, arriving at a home, car, or business near you in 2016 and forever transforming the way we live, work and play.

We often refer to this trend as Internet of Things (IoT), which encompasses devices and machines that had never been connected before—trucks, cars, sensors, alarms, and so on. As I mentioned in my previous post, security will be critical in the success of the connected life as we envision it.

Analysts predict there will be anywhere from 20 billion to 50 billion connected devices by 2020.

An impressive number, either way. But what’s most impressive is the information—the real-time data—that will emerge from all those connected devices.

And that, to me, is the life-changing promise of the IoT.

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