Sharon Kleyne Hour

The Internet of Things (IoT). The inundation of disruptive technologies is changing the way we do everything. What is the Internet of Things (IoT) and what does it mean to our nation’s and the world’s way of doing things? The IoT involves monitoring and sensing the present condition of things like our cities’ infrastructure, bridges, roads, water supplies and the impacts to those things by population and climate changes. The IoT is permitting humans to embed and describe our physical world into computer systems and across the internet at an ever-increasing pace. These changes come with an associated increase in system efficiency, economic benefits, and reduced human participation or intervention. Disruptive, down-sized nanotechnologies are forcing the way we do things to change rapidly, sometimes for good, sometimes not. Other topics: water resources and the associated physical systems for storing, distributing, and cleaning water and how the IoT is impacting what we do.