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The Harvard Symposium on Engineering and Entrepreneurship:  The Internet of Things.

On September30, 2016 The J. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied  Sciences and The Harvard Business School sponsored the above titled  symposium  https://www.seas.harvard.edu/calendar/event/92386   . I attended out of personal interest. Here are my notes about this symposium

1.    What is “The Internet ofThings? Increasingly we connect sensors through  a communication network (often the WWW) with actuators to automate various  tasks  of our civilization such as the power grid,online marketing and service, and managing a smart city. We call this IoT andWeb 4.0

2.    Smart City. By 2050 the majority of the world’s population will be living in  cities which will account for 80% of the world GDP, 70% of the energy  consumption, and 70% of the Green House Gases. The management,  sustainability  of,  and resource allocation in such cities including traffic will require both physical and digital infrastructure development and maintenance (e.g., in the city of Chicago currently there are only 34 food  inspectors for some 15,000 restaurants; Mapping century old underground pipes and structures; and design of smart public libraries). These often require civic partnerships amongphilanthropic organizations, National Laboratories, business and government agencies. With abundance of data, also come privacy and security issues.

3.    Costs involved. While savings from a “Smart xxx” canbe substantial (e.g., 90% and payback in 2 years), there are uncertainties and as well as financing  issues and incentives (the emerging of so-called CSO or -Customer Success Officer  to oversee such endeavors).

4.    Bridging the Cyber and the Physical World. From Augmented Reality,  to smart manufacturing, to connected service and maintenance, to a smart region (e.g.,smart power grid)

5.    Ethics of IoT. Things we do may not be ethically neutral as the Internet  professes to be. Difficulties in maintaining privacy in this age of big data. Codes and algorithms we design become de-facto laws, and we become policy makers unconsciously. “I am just an engineer” is not an acceptable excuse.

Here are two more slources from sponsoring organizations about The Internet of Things:

https://hbr.org/2015/10/how-smart-connected-products-are-transforming-companies

https://hbr.org/2014/11/how-smart-connected-products-are-transforming-competition

www.ptc.com

More reporting on the symposium by Harvard Gazette can be found at http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/10/now-arriving-internet-of-things/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=10.05.2016%20(1)  and if you have sharp eyes you can even spot me ( sitting on the left side of second row) in the magazine photo.