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Wake me when the Internet of Things is over

Back in 2013, fashionable people started wearing glasses with a small but inevitably conspicuous built-in heads-up display and camera. These fashionistas were unusually distracted even for a distracted age – losing the threads of conversation, staring off into space, tilting their heads in odd ways, muttering strange commands (“take a picture”, “record a video”) and every now and again reciting impressive, if irrelevant, lists of facts magicked up from the pages of Wikipedia. The glasses were called “Google Glass”, the unfortunate creatures who wore them “Glass Explorers”. The “Glass Explorers” were soon dubbed “Glassholes”, the fad faded, and the glasses are no longer available.

Back in 2013, fashionable people started wearing glasses with a small but inevitably conspicuous built-in heads-up display and camera. These fashionistas were unusually distracted even for a distracted age – losing the threads of conversation, staring off into space, tilting their heads in odd ways, muttering strange commands (“take a picture”, “record a video”) and every now and again reciting impressive, if irrelevant, lists of facts magicked up from the pages of Wikipedia. The glasses were called “Google Glass”, the unfortunate creatures who wore them “Glass Explorers”. The “Glass Explorers” were soon dubbed “Glassholes”, the fad faded, and the glasses are no longer available. Is the Internet of Things (IoT) a more prolonged Google Glass experiment – a cumbersome way of addressing a non-problem? Over the past 20 years, companies have poured billions of dollars into the IoT. Consultancies gush in glossy reports about a wonderful future in which dumb objects are infused with intelligence – umbrella handles that glow when it is about to rain; pillboxes that yelp when you forget to take your meds; intelligent ovens that produce a perfect roast; tennis rackets that feed data to your smartphone, which then tells you how to improve your serve.