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Comment by wangii | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sold. The whole IoT thing fails miserably in story-telling. Until now, I have yet to read/hear/watch one compelling example. Who really cares if my chair is connected with the light so that I can get the best light shedding angle? who cares if my refrigerator is connect with my micro-wave to de-freeze meat according to my online menu?

Maybe I'm too old for this. There are millions of important things to be solved by computer and internet, yet big-names like Google and MIT push this typical high cost, low return technology, for what? to sell chips and standards to factories?

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Your comment reminds me of how people first looked at blogging, twitter, youtube, and many other technologies.

I agree that the examples we are usually given are not massively impressive, but neither is the ability to post info, or share your videos online.

I think IoT has been oversold in many ways for the short-term, exactly as you are pointing out. But in the long-term, I think it will be very impressive.

For example, my fridge knowing that I'm out of milk and reminding me to buy some. Sure, that's a pretty useless case. But what happens when we aggregate that over a large population and then we connect that with the grocers and dairies. Will we have JIT milk processing and production, saving significant energy and resources?

We just went from a very big 'so what' to potentially having a significant impact on the environment.

What happens is that you exchange both privacy and agency for no real return. It's a bad deal.

Can you expand/clarify what you are referring to? Is that in regard to my example of milk?

Thank you for a serious reply.

What troubles me more is not IoT, but the storytelling. It has been years people from this segment come out boring, meaningless videos, talks, articles usually feature microwave, doors, windows. Steve Jobs sold iPhone with 3 functions in hours. Yet after billions spent and thousands of smart minds working for years, we still have this?

I'm not sure if IoT has potential in long term. The most important thing about internet is it connects people, minds, creativity, imagination and consumers' pockets. I think as an industry we have too many more important and meaningful works to do, directly with people. I'm willing to bet that a well thought, carefully made video on youtube will make more positive impact on environment that the whole IoT segment combined today. If so, why bother?

If IoT really has potential, at this point it's very badly executed.

I think that like 3D printers, this stuff is useful to a fraction of the population, as a tool with which to prototype products for everyone else.

The thing to understand about the Media Lab is that it produces research, not products (although, the line is blurry, I give you that, and some groups at the Media Lab have spun off separate companies.) People at the Media Lab are working on figuring out what is possible, not necessarily what is useful. By inventing or exploring new techniques, it's possible for others to apply those techniques to "real" problems.

I recognize that this is an opinion and I don't have any proof, but I've spent some time in/around the media lab and I just thought I'd share my impression of the place.

I agree. At this point it really makes no sense to use this. But hey people said that about the internet back then. ;-)

The big deal of the internet is it connects people. Before AI takes over the planet, or invasion of alien, the most powerful thing is the communication amongst human beings, its implication we have not fully explored.

Comparing that to the internet? Don't even go there!

Why not? The Reality Editor is an equivalent of a Web Browser for the Physical space. We are spatial oriented creatures operating the world around us with muscle memory and physical tools. The real power of technology comes when we combine digital and physical tools seamlessly. What is in front of us will change the World around you even more then the Internet has done it up to this point. How do you want to engage with all of the self driving cars and digital/physical content and objects around you? Browse through 1000 apps with all the drop down menus? Who wants to remember all of these physical<->digital links? My question for that future now is: What will be the digital equivalent of a screwdriver in that future? Thats what the Reality Editor is! A powerful tool.

I can understand where you come from, but honestly I don't have a 1000 app to deal with and I don't want to connect my office chair to my fancy car seat. I feel sad that the world is what it is today, and it's mostly because of people like you.

"What will be the digital equivalent of a screwdriver in that future? Thats what the Reality Editor is! A powerful tool."

No comments on this one...

But this is what makes us Humans! The development of tools. You would not be able to write these messages if not for all the tools build along our path. Simple physical tools like a screwdriver enable us to fix and create objects in the physical space. Throughout history we build new tools for every new development to the point that we where able to build the internet. There are many things that are not quite right with the internet today, maybe this is where your sadness comes from? But as long as we build tools to empower individual humans to expand their horizon, I think that it is worth to build and use new tools. The Reality Editor opens up a new category of tools, this is what makes it powerful. It is a power for your own hands to enable you, similar a screw driver did for generations before.

How disapointing that this is the top post on an HN thread: A thoughtless rant dismissing all of IoT in a few sentences.

You use that word thoughtless, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

What...

What do you think he thinks the word thoughtless means? What do YOU think the word thoughtless means?

Did you seriously register an account just to tell him that you don't think he thinks the word thoughtless means what you think it means?

Why not counter it with a use-case that proves OP wrong instead of a meta-argument?

Well, I'd imagine that this person is doing it because they think it's cool.

But companies like Intel are doing it because they want to sell the servers that will eventually back all of this stuff.

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