By now you’re probably familiar with the Internet of Things or IoT and how it’s poised to revolutionize the way we use our digital devices. As we head to the 2020s, IoT will become part of our everyday lives, ushering in a new era of interconnectedness, says inventor and innovator Peter Zieve. In this blog, we’ll look at the origins of the term and the figures behind it.
The term would not have been coined if it weren’t for the founding of the Auto-ID Centre in 1999, a massive partnership among approximately 100 international companies and seven leading research universities, including the University of Cambridge and MIT. The goal was to explore the future of the electronic barcode and look for ways to tag everything electronically. Among the people spearheading the project were David Brock, Sanjay Sarma, and Kevin Ashton.
But electronic tagging had to be cost-effective, too; the founders of the project needed to make RFID cheap while using the smallest chips and storing data somewhere else. And the internet was the clear choice for this storage need. The idea is to accommodate things online, and Kevin Ashton, in particular, coined the term during a PowerPoint Presentation he made in the same year of 1999.
It’s not as though the method is entirely new, as researchers, scientists, and computer developers have been connecting objects to networks long before, explains Peter Zieve. But Ashton’s usage of the term “Internet of Things” stuck during his said presentation (it was delivered to the management of Procter & Gamble, on the benefits of RFID tags). The rest, as they say, is history.
Inventor and innovator Peter Zieve has 50 patents in his name. He is the founder and CEO of aerospace automation company Electroimpact, Inc. For more on Mr. Zieve and his work, go to this page.
Peter Zieve 