“Your Smartphone Is A Gateway Drug For You To Enter The Next Level”

December 5, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Christopher Mims at Quartz writing in defense of the Internet of Things, which he believes will soon make good on its promise thanks, in part, to the popularity of smartphones:

“In a sense the internet of things is already with us. For one thing, anyone with a smartphone has already joined the club. The average smartphone is brimming with sensors—an accelerometer, a compass, GPS, light, sound, altimeter. It’s the prototypical internet-connected listening station, equally adept at monitoring our health, the velocity of our car, the magnitude of earthquakes and countless other things that its creators never envisioned.

Smartphones are also becoming wireless hubs for other gadgets and sensors, as well as universal remote controls for your smart home (paywall). ‘You’re now carrying the perfect tool with you in the form of your smartphone, to stay connected to your physical graph,’ says Alex Hawkinson, CEO of Smartthings. (For those who don’t speak Silicon Valley English, ‘your physical graph’ means ‘your things,’ just as ‘your social graph’ means ‘your friends.’ ) ‘The psychological impact is that consumers are hyper-connected,” he adds.

In this way, your smartphone is a gateway drug for you to enter the next level, in which the internet is ‘in’ your thermostat, lights, door locks, car and wristwatch. Familiarizing consumers with this world, the thinking goes, will lead to what we’ve all been promised: a physical world that’s as malleable and responsive as the virtual one we already can’t live without.”

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