‘Life’s a glitch, then you die’

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the hottest trends in technology right now. The notion behind the buzzword essentially sees almost all of the objects we interact with on a daily basis connected and able to interact with each other. It’s an area that’s full of promise and a number of companies are in on the action.

The potential for IoT is endless – from fridges sending email to smart metering to name a couple. Apple has just announced its Home Kit which will allow users to control everything in their homes from their iPhones, which serves as an indication of what is to come.

It’s exciting times for those of us working in technology PR, we are involved in building the positive and firefighting the negative. How can we secure IoT? What are the risks involved? What could happen if IoT went wrong? What will the world look like if IoT works as it should?

More recently, the focus has turned to IoT security and the possible risks of having everything joined to a single connected network. It’s certainly an interesting area to explore, but I feel that the speculation about what could happen is pretty abstract.  But where does this all come from? I think the earliest roots of this negativity can be found in our pop culture.

In The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror X segment:  ‘Life’s a glitch, then you die’, Homer is tasked with ensuring that all the computers at work are protected against the Y2K bug. All looks fine, but he forgets to sort out his own computer, which glitches at the turn of the millennium and spreads a terminal computer virus across the world.

Computers across the world start malfunctioning, rendering society completely impotent. Whilst in the kitchen, surrounded by malfunctioning home ware appliances, Lisa points out that everything has a computer chip inside it – from milk cartons, to fridges and microwaves.  This is close to the basic idea behind IoT.

However, they inevitably become compromised by the Y2K bug. Devices all over the world are rendered incapable of performing the tasks they were designed to do, and even start attacking their owners. The cataclysm escalates and effectively spells the end of the world.

Obviously, this is riddled with hyperbole, but the fundamental idea holds. There are high risks involved that need to be brought out into the open – the security angle will dominate IoT as with any other area of technology.

In technology PR we often have to deal with complex ideas that have to be heavily simplified. A common idiom in this industry is ‘explain it like you’d explain it to your mates down the pub’. The Simpsons is great for simplifying and creating an engaging story, our challenge is to do the same with the upside of IoT.  

(Image:  Hinkelstone via Flickr Creative Commons)