Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Greetings everyone, Welcome to Forward Thinking. I am
Speaker 1: your host, Jonathan Strickland, joined by my fellow co hosts
Speaker 1: who are going to introduce themselves now. I am Lauren
Speaker 1: voc Obam. I am Joe McCormick, and these two people
Speaker 1: are part of the brain trust that keeps Forward Thinking going.
Speaker 1: We are looking at topics that are going to be
Speaker 1: really important to us in the future, how they're going
Speaker 1: to affect us as human beings. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that we wanted to talk about was this concept
Speaker 1: of the Internet of things. Now, Lauren, if I came
Speaker 1: up to you and I said, what is this Internet
Speaker 1: of things concept? I just don't understand. How would you
Speaker 1: describe it? Well, basically, it's the idea that all of
Speaker 1: the devices that we use, not just our computers and
Speaker 1: our cell phones, but also our cars and our houses,
Speaker 1: are going to be communicating with each other in order
Speaker 1: to provide the best environment possible for every human person. Right.
Speaker 1: This idea that we're going to have ubiquitous sensors around
Speaker 1: us constantly gathering data, crunching that data in some sort
Speaker 1: of way, and then using the data in different ways,
Speaker 1: whether that's to serve it up to us saying, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, your energy usage this month has been
Speaker 1: such and such, or oh, by the way, you've burned
Speaker 1: x number of calories because you did all this running
Speaker 1: around today, or it will actually make devices behave in
Speaker 1: a very specific way, and it kind of takes human
Speaker 1: interaction completely out of that equation, so that your thermostat,
Speaker 1: for example, might adjust itself based upon the weather and
Speaker 1: maybe even your own bodies temperature. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: this neat idea of technology shaping the world around us. Uh, Joe,
Speaker 1: why don't we talk a little bit about what the
Speaker 1: video kind of covered and what we're gonna cover today. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: in the video, we were talking about how we focused
Speaker 1: a lot on how the Internet of Things will change
Speaker 1: the end user experience of the world, and and by
Speaker 1: that I mean just the way the world looks to
Speaker 1: you and me um And we talked about customizable environments,
Speaker 1: which means that you know, the room in your house
Speaker 1: might have any number of hidden elements that are conspiring
Speaker 1: to make your life more comfortable and easier, and they're
Speaker 1: taking data to learn what you like and and and
Speaker 1: how to fit you best. So this could be lighting
Speaker 1: and music, environmental control like you were saying, Um, but
Speaker 1: I thought in this podcast one thing that would be
Speaker 1: interesting to talk about would be an even more invisible
Speaker 1: aspect of how the Internet of Things will change society,
Speaker 1: which is how it will change efficiency in the processes
Speaker 1: we don't always see in industry, in civic systems, sure
Speaker 1: care anything, Yeah, yeah, I mean we're talking again about
Speaker 1: devices that are are taking endless measurements and then sending
Speaker 1: that data back in some fashion to make our lives
Speaker 1: easier and uh. And in manufacturing, that's a very simple
Speaker 1: way of of changing huge outcomes. I mean, manufacturing processes
Speaker 1: have changed quite a bit ever since the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 1: but the idea of the Internet Things could bring that
Speaker 1: to an even more precise level. Right when you have
Speaker 1: machines that have computers at every single stop gap of
Speaker 1: the process that are you know, calling home and telling
Speaker 1: you what the machine is doing, how efficient it's being,
Speaker 1: how fast the motors are running, how fast the products
Speaker 1: being turned out, then you can you can use that
Speaker 1: to completely optimize everything every step of the way, and furthermore,
Speaker 1: have that machine tell you when it's about to break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which of course would be a huge benefit you if
Speaker 1: you already know that you need to do some preventive
Speaker 1: maintenance on a machine before it breaks down. Uh, that
Speaker 1: can mean the difference between a profitable month or a disaster.
Speaker 1: And Joe, you you have a story you were telling
Speaker 1: us earlier about kind of you gave us a scenario
Speaker 1: where this makes sense. Oh yeah, Well, I mean you
Speaker 1: just have to imagine you're you're in a furniture factory.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're the floor manager there, and you produce a
Speaker 1: certain kind of upholstered chair. Now, you know, for a
Speaker 1: while it's been taking X number of hours to complete
Speaker 1: the production from you know, when you first get the
Speaker 1: parts until when you ship it. Suddenly, this month it's
Speaker 1: taking twice as long now in lots of factories. You
Speaker 1: might have no idea why, because we've got humans dealing
Speaker 1: with the machines at every step along the way, and
Speaker 1: you have no devices to really track the difference in
Speaker 1: how long it takes to produce this thing and give
Speaker 1: real time analytics and feedback. With the Internet of Things,
Speaker 1: each particular cog along the production line is both uploading
Speaker 1: and downloading information, so the production line itself is teaching
Speaker 1: and learning right, So then by the if there is
Speaker 1: something that's that's causing a slower production than normal, you
Speaker 1: can actually see where the bottlenecks occurring. And then or
Speaker 1: if the if it's an intelligent enough system, it anticipates
Speaker 1: that and fixes it so that you never have that
Speaker 1: problem to start with. Uh, it's definitely something that could
Speaker 1: impact us down the line. This is something that you know,
Speaker 1: anyone who works in that industry, obviously it would affect them.
Speaker 1: But if you're asking, all right, well how about the
Speaker 1: average person, the consumer, how would that affect this person? Well,
Speaker 1: increased efficiencies could mean that you see prices start to
Speaker 1: come down on products because it takes less money to
Speaker 1: produce them, and as competition rises, that could see that
Speaker 1: the prices come down. You know, you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about that profit margin being affected because the cost
Speaker 1: of production and has gone down so that you can
Speaker 1: actually lower the cost to the consumer. That doesn't always happen. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we have industries out there where the cost of productions
Speaker 1: come down, let's keep the price the same way. But
Speaker 1: it's something that could happen sure, and if it happens
Speaker 1: in your industry, that means and you get to hypothetically
Speaker 1: make more money, so it's not a bad thing either. No,
Speaker 1: that that tends to make shareholders very happy as it
Speaker 1: turns out, And you were mentioned Joe also about the
Speaker 1: the civic uses. One of my favorite illustrations of the
Speaker 1: Internet of Things is the idea that with the true
Speaker 1: implementation of the Internet things, that it's at its most
Speaker 1: pervasive level, traffic doesn't exist. It can be completely automated,
Speaker 1: so that, for example, if you live in say Atlanta,
Speaker 1: like the three of us do, and have to commute
Speaker 1: through Atlanta like the three of us do, then you
Speaker 1: don't get in traffic jams that take up how many
Speaker 1: how many hours a week? It's the average, it's like
Speaker 1: for the average Atlanta and I think they spend around
Speaker 1: half an hour per uh per trip. Yeah, it's it's well,
Speaker 1: it could be more than that actually, because I think
Speaker 1: in Atlanta the average commute is close to around thirty miles,
Speaker 1: which is that's a that's a long commute for someone
Speaker 1: who lives in the city where they're working. It means
Speaker 1: that a lot of us are not living very close
Speaker 1: to wherever our offices are. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: Atlanta traffic is pretty bad. It's it does regularly rank
Speaker 1: in those top cities of bad traffic cities like Los
Speaker 1: Angeles or New York or d C. There are several
Speaker 1: in the United States that are known as being bad
Speaker 1: when you're a driver, just for the sense of how
Speaker 1: much time you're going to spend sitting in traffic. But
Speaker 1: with the Internet of Things, you could have all these
Speaker 1: devices that detect changes in traffic and either relay that
Speaker 1: information to drivers so that they can react proactively and
Speaker 1: take a different route so that they're no longer at
Speaker 1: risk of being delayed because of a change in traffic,
Speaker 1: or if you pair this with say an autonomous car,
Speaker 1: the cars themselves start to adjust without your input at all,
Speaker 1: and next thing you know, you're where you need to be.
Speaker 1: Um and beyond that, we're talking about improvements that could
Speaker 1: allow things like dynamic control of traffic signals. So the
Speaker 1: example I always give is, imagine you're driving home at
Speaker 1: three in the morning, as the three of us often
Speaker 1: are doing, but because we burned the midnight oil at
Speaker 1: our office, not because we're all party animals. That's also true,
Speaker 1: but not not material. But you're driving home at three
Speaker 1: in the morning, and you get to that infamous traffic
Speaker 1: stop where the light has turned red and you know
Speaker 1: you're going to be sitting there for three minutes while
Speaker 1: there's no cross traffic at all. With a truly dynamic system,
Speaker 1: the traffic components already know you're approaching, they already know
Speaker 1: there's no traffic coming the other way, and they change
Speaker 1: all the yeah. So that means at three in the morning,
Speaker 1: you have the magical experience of all green lights all
Speaker 1: the time, so that red lights when you see them,
Speaker 1: become uh, something that's unusual and hopefully you remember what
Speaker 1: to do. But but more importantly, well, that same principle
Speaker 1: could be translated to matters of life and death, not
Speaker 1: just convenience. I mean, if you imagine um the problems
Speaker 1: that are first responder encounters. You know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you ever had that experience of you're sitting in
Speaker 1: traffic at rush hour and nobody's moving, and suddenly behind
Speaker 1: you you hear a siren and you see an ambulance
Speaker 1: coming through and it just can't penetrate them, and there's
Speaker 1: nothing you can do. There's something it can do. Everyone
Speaker 1: is at a standstill, right, It's just stuck, and you know,
Speaker 1: in the back of that ambulance, somebody you know, could
Speaker 1: be dying and they have to get through, but they can't. Now,
Speaker 1: imagine if the traffic grid was smart, if the cars
Speaker 1: were smart, they were all communicating, If the traffic lights
Speaker 1: were smart, they were all communicating. The grid itself could
Speaker 1: clear a path because it knows where the first responder
Speaker 1: needs to go. You know, before you even heard the
Speaker 1: siren that it was coming that you needed to pull over.
Speaker 1: The traffic lights would know, so they could block off
Speaker 1: traffic from cross streets. Yeah, this is truly a matter
Speaker 1: of life and death. It could mean that it saves lives.
Speaker 1: This the internet things could literally save and prolonged life
Speaker 1: in that fashion. And beyond that, it's it's something that
Speaker 1: could also impact on a macro scale, our energy use
Speaker 1: and and even our energy production. Lauren, you were telling
Speaker 1: me about something along those lines. Yeah, if if railways
Speaker 1: were smarter, they could use GPS two track trains. Also
Speaker 1: the add in the length and the and the load
Speaker 1: into the data and minimax the performance and fuel usage.
Speaker 1: Um Also with the production of energy itself, you could
Speaker 1: have wind turbines that no one to shut down due
Speaker 1: to danger from high winds. At an individual level, they
Speaker 1: could they could be detecting what's going on with the
Speaker 1: weather if if they start freezing up in the winter
Speaker 1: automatically speed up to knock off ice. One wind farm
Speaker 1: in particular did to study where they input a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of the smart technology and over the course of
Speaker 1: a year, they had about a three pc increase in
Speaker 1: energy output, which sounds really small until you take into
Speaker 1: consideration that that's one point two million dollars in additional revenue. Tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny changes in industries can end up having huge impacts
Speaker 1: down the road. It's uh, it can be very simple
Speaker 1: to sort of right off something where you hear of
Speaker 1: small percentage, but it means a big change. I mean,
Speaker 1: especially or something as large as as energy production. So
Speaker 1: you're talking about having this this system that can intelligently
Speaker 1: react to different different inputs, whether it's environmental or or
Speaker 1: performance or even a human factor and be able to
Speaker 1: adjust so that's giving the most efficient output. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's an amazing story. And obviously once we reach this
Speaker 1: point in the world, our experiences day to day will
Speaker 1: be very different. I think because we you know, things
Speaker 1: like traffic, I can't imagine you know what a generation
Speaker 1: who grows up without traffic would feel like if suddenly
Speaker 1: there was a traffic jam. You know, the green light
Speaker 1: scenario sounds like magic to me. It does again Arthur C.
Speaker 1: Clark right there saying about the you know, as as
Speaker 1: technologies get more sophisticated, they eventually reach a point where
Speaker 1: they are indistinguishable from magic, and that would be a
Speaker 1: wonderful world to live in. I do I do worry
Speaker 1: about living in a world that would occasionally need to
Speaker 1: control all delete uh, but you know, we tried turning
Speaker 1: it off and on again. But that that to me.
Speaker 1: The bonuses, the positives about this world are so phenomenal
Speaker 1: that it would be unthinkable not to pursue them. Sure,
Speaker 1: and lots of lots of companies are doing that currently.
Speaker 1: The g is calling it the industrial Internet right now.
Speaker 1: IBM has a phrase that they're calling Smarter Planet. Cisco,
Speaker 1: of course, has the Internet of Everything that they keep
Speaker 1: talking about. Sure. Yeah, So everyone has a different kind
Speaker 1: of way of summing this up in a in a
Speaker 1: little a little title, but it's it's all saying the
Speaker 1: same thing. Yeah. The point is is that it's incredibly
Speaker 1: worthwhile financially and environmentally and socially. Yeah, so I'm I'm
Speaker 1: excited to see this world come about. I cannot wait
Speaker 1: to find out what my own personal reality is going
Speaker 1: to be, especially considering that I won't have to worry
Speaker 1: about traffic anymore. That that I I know, I go
Speaker 1: on about that, but really, if you've lived in a
Speaker 1: place where there's been a lot of traffic, I can
Speaker 1: you all understand it? The idea of no traffic is
Speaker 1: something that we think. It's just a fairy tale. I
Speaker 1: think we should get in on it. The naming, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll have to come up with our own version
Speaker 1: names so we can get in on the ground floor. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll start. We'll start brainstorming names for the Internet
Speaker 1: of Things. I vote Dave, but other names are are
Speaker 1: fully it's all up to discussion. Just remember my decisions
Speaker 1: final and then we're all good. Um and guys, we're
Speaker 1: going to have this amazing websites launching on March first,
Speaker 1: and it's called forward Thinking dot com. That's f w
Speaker 1: thinking dot com. At that site, you're going to be
Speaker 1: able to find copies of our audio podcast. You're gonna
Speaker 1: be able to see the video series Forward Thinking, which
Speaker 1: is really amazing, and you're going to be able to
Speaker 1: read some blog posts written by these two amazing co
Speaker 1: host of mine, also some written by me as well.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I highly encourage you to go to that
Speaker 1: website check it out. Uh once it launches on March one.
Speaker 1: It's really going to be something special. I'm very excited
Speaker 1: about it, and I'm excited to see the future. Guys,
Speaker 1: hope you are too a little bit kind of Joe
Speaker 1: dout alright, excellent, We're all in agreement here. I hope
Speaker 1: you guys are too out there and we hope to
Speaker 1: hear from you soon. For more on this topic in
Speaker 1: the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought
Speaker 1: to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,