The connected egg tray is more a proof of concept than anything else, Micheal.

One of the important things to keep in mind with the discussion of the Internet of Things is that these technologies are here and being rolled out as we speak. It’s fair enough to be afraid of them, but they’re coming anyway. I think it’s a better idea to understand them rather than fear them.

     Internet egg-trays? I was wondering about that when it was mentioned on Tony Delroy’s program in advance a week or so ago, but the discussion never actually got onto that. What on earth next? Perhaps I need a toothbrush that can connect to the Internet – why not?

     Whatever happened to the old idea of looking in the fridge to see if you need more eggs, and putting them on your shopping list? – or even going up specially to the shops to buy them if the need is urgent? This may save us a bit of effort, but if that trend continues massively, we will all end up getting fatter and fatter, and the public health bill very likely will eat up any savings new gimmicks like this may make in the beginning.

     I think this story illustrates that many of our things are getting just far too interconnected, far too complicated. I think as a civilization we are headed for a truckload of trouble if we get too dependent on this sort of stuff and something goes horrendously wrong with it: either a fault develops that even the designers can’t figure out (or figure out quickly enough), or perhaps it gets infected by a virus or brought down by sabotage by terrorists. Perhaps terrorists might get hold of the master password of some important area of interconnectedness, encrypt the vital data, and demand a huge ransom (in money or political concessions) before releasing it – as with the CryptoLocker Trojan (look it up on Wikipedia), for example.

     Also, I see this potentially as yet another way the already-excessive gap between the rich and the poor may be widened: as things get more complicated and more interconnected, there will be fewer and fewer things that can be either fixed, or replaced and installed, by non-technical people – yet the poorest may not be able to afford the expensive fees that technicians will probably charge to do it for them.

     Do the designers and promoters of all this stuff ever think of potential problems like these? Or are they too caught up in their rosy haze of excitement over all these nice new shiny toys? Frankly, it scares me on almost every front.