I've been pissed off about the "Internet of Things" for about a year now. It's this buzzwordy thing that people who don't have a clue use to convince people they do. A couple things happened, and I'm zen now.

Thing 1 was General Electric calling it "The Industrial Internet." There aren't many less buzz-worthy words than "Industrial." And while calling it "The Industrial internet" Geoffrey Immelt pointed out that increasing the efficiency of jet engines by one percent could save airlines three billion dollars a year. Fuck your toaster's IP address - it makes a lot of sense to put a bunch of sensors on a 40,000 HP bypass turbofan.

Thing 2 was this tedious fucking book going all gaga over "the Internet of Things" while at the same time talking to people who were slapping sensors all over stuff. And that's when I realized that

The Internet of Things is a phrase used by people who don't understand telemetry.

'cuz that's all we're talking about. Sensors talking to other sensors. That's the 'internet of things.' It's gadgets communicating with other gadgets for the betterment of gadgetry and we've been doing that since the telegraph. I've got a weather station. It's got an IP, a NOAA call sign and a CWOP slot. It's part of "the Internet of things." But it's a weather station. It has all those things because it's useful for it to have them. And that's the thing about telemetry - slapping a sensor on something doesn't automatically make it more useful.

There's this notion that 'the Internet of Things' will improve everyone's life by making all of our gadgets talk to each other. This presumes that the gadgets need to talk to each other to be useful, or that a connection will automatically enhance the performance of an isolated gadget. I'm a straight-up gadget freak - there are seven computers in this house, five online. I have a network involving five switches (four unmanaged, one managed - it's complicated). I do a port scan on the network and I find about 20 devices. And while I can control my stereo via a web interface that I can undoubtedly connect to my phone, I like the remote, thanks. It has buttons and doesn't pause its function when I get a text message.

That is what's wrong with The internet of Things - it's a mystical title for a mundane reality in order to snow people who don't know any better. An IP-connected thermostat? 'bout fuckin' time. Crestron and Xantech have had that shit since the mid '90s, it was just expensive. That's telemetry with a purpose. Wireless diapers? Fuck that shit.