You're joining me on a miserably rainy commute this morning on today.

I want to think about the Internet of things, um, a modern phenomenon encouraging manufacturers and hobbyists alike to make sure that everything they create is attached to the Internet.

My understanding of the Internet of things is that we have lots of devices that work together to make our lives easier.

That's the planets.

The future is jet packs and flying cars.

But I think the incidence of things that it stands at the moment is a little bit enough.

What started offers a hobbyists endeavor on.

We'll probably talk about that a bit more later.

About seems to have been jumped upon by manufacturers, but not in an intelligent way.

And now it seems that manufacturers are making their devices Internet enabled just for the sake of it.

Way heard stories of the juice of the wooden juice unless it was connected via WiFi to the Internet, which, of course, left it's all asking, What's the point?

Why does my cattle need to be connected to the Internet?

Why does my fridge need to be connected to the incident?

Why does my washing machine needs to be connected to the Internet.

And, of course, the system falls down when these devices no longer function as washing machines, fridges and kettles.

If they don't have access to the Internet, I don't need to tweet.

I've just made a cup of tea, and I don't need my cattle to tweet for me that I just made a good.

However, the one lone code of log is not going to be about rant.

I'm not into that on the incident.

It's too easy to be negative on the Internet, So I want to spend some time trying to think about the Internet of things, why it might be a success.

Why it's probably not going to be a success on DDE.

What it means for one little code is the bedroom developers, the lobbyists.

I was on Amazon the other day, and they advertised to me these buttons I could press for when I run out of toilet paper and washing machine powder on its ah little button, you just put next year washing machine toilet paper holder in the bathroom, for example.

If it's if you use Andrex, it has the Andrex logo for student upon it, Andi, you press it and it automatically contacts.

Amazon automatically bodies you it and it should appear on two days later on, you know Amazon will push the service in the future.

It will appear that afternoon, of course, by drone delivery, which you know is the future.

So I press this button and the drone and drop some toilet paper out of the sky and it lands on my roof and they spend the next two days trying to find some ladders.

Thio, get up onto my roof, at which point the birds have already packed it and water seeped into the toilet paper, making it useless.

But I can't not the idea what if, instead of having buttons requiring batteries and WiFi connections everywhere, we have these styluses on DDE that really locally it looks like a tablet, and it's got this usually white front with lines on it.

Is it cold?

But anyway, you can use this magical device to record a list of the things that you need, and next time you go shopping it, it'll be there.

It'll tell you what you need.

But of course, Amazon not only are they selling products were these buttons, they're off.

There will definitely be collecting the data.

If they determine that you're requiring toilet paper every Saturday morning, then they could probably advertise Teoh things to do with your lifestyle.

That means you require a lot of toilet paper on Saturday morning.

That, for me, is where the Internet of things starts to fall down a little bit.

This potential for really evil because it seems that the Internet of things is really just being harnessed for social networking and selling you stuff not for making led these lights up a command and doing cool, cool, geeky things around your house.

It's also very easy for unimaginative developers of these big companies to just to coin a popular parody.

Twitter accounts to just being a chip into it on you can.

You know you can rebound your product that this is a smart widget.

It's a widget connect widget 2.0, which it connected to the Internet, the widget that learns about you and it's ah, it's a patronizing attempt by by manufacturers as well to suggest that my cattle is inadequate because it's not connected to the Internet.

And let's be frank, you're only going to press the toilet paper button when you've run out of toilet paper, so waiting for a day for it to arrive is not convenient in the slightest.

It's a complete gimmick.

I propose that nobody's forward thinking enough to remember to press that button when they've only got one day's worth of toilet paper left.

What they should have is an Internet connected, smart toilet roll holder that can evaluate the thickness of your toilet paper roll on, then tell you how many you've got left on.

Order it for you in advance.

It's a missed opportunity.

I could so easily be a millionaire now.

I was browsing my local being cute.

The other day on dhe, I saw a nice, brightly lit display off well light bulbs on dhe.

These light bulbs were controllable.

They're an app on my phone.

I think they were.

Phillips burned, and I thought, Oh, that that'll be really cool.

You know, I've got a living room, which is it's colored by the lights that I put in it by designs, so I like it.

Wouldn't it be cool?

I can just set the color of the room, basically change the color of the paint by changing the light bulb anyway, that the cost of these light bulbs were shocking.

If I actually invested in this technology isn't going to be around next year.

Is my phone going to be compatible with it next year on how we're going to really stop my neighbors from changing the color of my life boats?

It got me thinking about the broader implications of home automation and other tenants of the 19 fifties vision of the future.

Along with Mabel, Get Hat.

There's a certain allure about having your home connected Thio Essential server and you control.

It's all very little device in your hand, but I think it's an artificial.

I mean, I don't need to open my curtains with a knack for my bed.

I don't need to set the cattle off downstairs before I get downstairs.

I don't eat my central heating to follow me around the house.

I think it's a fantastic example of the Internet of things undermining itself.

I'm encouraged to push a button to get more toilet roll, but I'm dissuaded from pushing a button to turn the lights on.

So why don't I just get the toilet roll app.

Definitely an obsession with toilet roll this morning.

I have not renounced.

My observations of home automation is nothing like the predictions from the fifties.

So far.

It really just seems that instead of having user interfaces off walls, we just have user interfaces on our phones.

On dhe, we're told that this is more convenient.

Well, it's certainly more convenient for the manufacturers.

It's cheaper and easier to produce on if they get it wrong.

First time they can just release patches.

But I think that's where it all falls down, doesn't it?

They can't really get it wrong if they get it wrong and the heating system damages my house or leaks all over the floor.

I'm sure by installing the device, I've signed a waiver, which means I can't hold them liable for the damage if a glitch in the software causes my energy bills to go up because it's looking at some Health and Safety executive website to tell me that my house needs to be a certain temperature at all times on Even worse is doing this without my intervention.

Did I go, too?

Now let's say I go to the expense of making my whole house automated.

My central heating system is fully replaced.

I've got electronic valves, and although all the radiators, my lighting system is completely joined up by network and cable and signalling cables behind the walls, it's cost me a fortune have torn the house apart.

The wife's left me.

Everything's in bits.

Is anybody guaranteeing that I will still be able to use this technology in five years?

Time is anybody pushing for a standard for this technology, so devices can communicate?

Let's just take something as simple as a can boss.

Make it so there's an object dictionary and you can index into it.

At least then there's some cross compatibility between devices, so when one company goes bust, another one can come in on back it up.

Fill in those gaps, but it doesn't seem to be happening, and that's because it's really now the big players jumping on the Internet of things bandwagon on.

They don't want to share their technologies with their competitors on By having a propriety technology, you're walled into their ecosystem.

This is a far cry from what the Internet of things was set up to do.

But enough about the commercial applications.

I think at the moment it's a gimmick.

It's Ah, it's a bandwagon.

Is the abilities put eye and smart in front of your product on?

I don't think people are that stupid, I think the company's heir really underestimating the thinking capabilities off the general public.

So let's consider the plethora of options to the hobbyist on the maker who can now add Internet capabilities to absolutely everything in anything.

It's quite a simple idea.

You provide a little bored with some functional.

I owe something like a You are something simple.

It's easy to connect your Arduino whatever on dhe.

This little board.

All it needs is a wife I chip and antenna on some sort of Internet stack programmed on the on The way you go.

It's a double edged sword on the one side.

Well, it's really fantastic.

It does open up the market, people can have a play and it could be a lot of fun, and you could do some silly good things on the other side.

It's isn't encouraging laziness amongst developers.

Why are there so many of these boards?

Why is it that they all seem to come from various Chinese factories.

Now where the European and British and American companies that are making these devices does that raise issues of security.

If all of these devices aren't conforming to any particular security standards, they're probably not secure.

They may well be farming data, sending it to service, although admittedly that date is not going to be very interesting.

And I don't want to dissuade any home hobbyist for making a tweet herbal fish tank feeder, and it should all be seen in good folk.

I think it's a powerful tool, and it requires the hobbyist on the maker to group together and set standards.

Don't just create everything for yourself.

We've done okay for traffic today, so I think the Internet of things is still very immature at the moment.

I think it's a bit of a gimmick, however, it's not going to go away.

We do actually enjoy a connected lifestyle.

Everybody's addicted to the phones.

Nobody will argue that the phone is not a success, but it's probably the fact that the phone could do so much more than the one singular purpose of a typical Internet of things connected device.