From: nextBigfuture
Our fast-approaching future of driverless cars and “smart” electrical grids will depend on billions of linked devices making decisions and communicating with split-second precision to prevent highway collisions and power outages. But a new report released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) warns that this future could be stalled by our lack of effective methods to marry computers and networks with timing systems.
The authors, who include NIST’s Marc Weiss and seven experts from academia and industry, are concerned about the way most modern data systems are designed to process and exchange data with one another and what that could mean for a world of discrete processors and mechanical devices linked by an information network—the “Internet of Things” (IoT). In addition to giving you access to the status of your home appliances anywhere, anytime, the IoT encompasses many potentially important but delicate applications such as cars that drive themselves and telemedicine surgical suites that allow doctors to operate on patients from remote locations. People are still imagining applications for the IoT, but GE predicts that nearly half the global economy can benefit from it.
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