By Sajith Pai
From 3D-printed high performance race cars to wrist-bands that light up when it recognises another person with common interests, from smart ovens that adjust temperatures midway through the cooking process to a world of ‘Zero UI’ where screens disappear and natural gestures trigger interactions with devices, the emerging world of IoT or Internet of Things was laid bare at O’Reilly’s Solid conference.
O’Reilly’s Solid is promoted as a conference that is designed to offer a window into IoT and its evolution. But more than a window into IoT, it is also a window into the future itself.
William Gibson, renowned sci-fi author and futurist, who also coined the term cyberspace, said in what has become one of his most famous quotes “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed”. By that logic, the Fort Mason Centre by the San Francisco Bay, last week, was where the future was largely concentrated.
The three day conference was a mix of talks by an ecelectic bunch of thinkers including tech activist Cory Doctorow, design guru Robert Brunner who co-founded the cutting-edge design firm Ammunition and MIT Media Lab’s Joi Ito amongst others, seminars and an expo which also showcased a bunch of startups or emergent innovators.
In addition to the focus on IoT itself, the conference and the expo also saw a lot of firms that were focused around smart manufacturing and helping companies put in place the building blocks of a cheaper, faster, personalized manufacturing process – such as Particle which offers a suite of hardware and software tools to help build your first prototype in minutes, Electric Imp which makes it easy for a manufacturer to connect their devices to the internet or Temboo which helps companies create production-ready code for IoT applications without having to learn complex programmining.
As an aside, Indian entrepreneurs would do well to study this new world of manufacturing, especially given its potential to help them leapfrog, just as mobile telephony allowed a leapfrog over landlines. Given the Modi regime’s focus on Make In India, who knows, manufacturing just might turn out to the next sexy industry.
In conclusion, we might add that O’Reilly’s Solid conference, much as its name suggests, is a welcome return to a celebration of the physical world, or systems and processes that enable us to produce that physical object. The valley’s most celebrated innovations (and unicorns) have thus far been in dematerialized cyberspaces (google, facebook, twitter etc) or as software buttons to physical actions (uber, airbnb, amazon etc). In the Solid conference, we see a counterpoint to the above and a glimpse of a third world – a purely material universe, a world where much of tomorrow’s innovations are gathered.
(This is part I of a 2-part series on Solid conference and the world of IoT and Smart Manufacturing. Part II will feature a look at some of the interesting products and startups that presented at the conference.)
From 3D-printed high performance race cars to wrist-bands that light up when it recognises another person with common interests, from smart ovens that adjust temperatures midway through the cooking process to a world of ‘Zero UI’ where screens disappear and natural gestures trigger interactions with devices, the emerging world of IoT or Internet of Things was laid bare at O’Reilly’s Solid conference.
Internet of Things or IoT is a phrase that refers to the increasing intelligence that is beginning to get embedded in everyday items (primarily through sensors) such as Apple’s smartwatches, FitBit devices, Nest Thermostats etc which enables other devices to trigger, control, communicate with these devices. Over time, it is believed that all these devices will interconnect with other smart devices to form a ‘smart grid’ of its own, much as computers connected to form a internetwork (or internet).
O’Reilly’s Solid is promoted as a conference that is designed to offer a window into IoT and its evolution. But more than a window into IoT, it is also a window into the future itself.
William Gibson, renowned sci-fi author and futurist, who also coined the term cyberspace, said in what has become one of his most famous quotes “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed”. By that logic, the Fort Mason Centre by the San Francisco Bay, last week, was where the future was largely concentrated.
The three day conference was a mix of talks by an ecelectic bunch of thinkers including tech activist Cory Doctorow, design guru Robert Brunner who co-founded the cutting-edge design firm Ammunition and MIT Media Lab’s Joi Ito amongst others, seminars and an expo which also showcased a bunch of startups or emergent innovators.
Discover the stories of your interest
In addition to the focus on IoT itself, the conference and the expo also saw a lot of firms that were focused around smart manufacturing and helping companies put in place the building blocks of a cheaper, faster, personalized manufacturing process – such as Particle which offers a suite of hardware and software tools to help build your first prototype in minutes, Electric Imp which makes it easy for a manufacturer to connect their devices to the internet or Temboo which helps companies create production-ready code for IoT applications without having to learn complex programmining.
As an aside, Indian entrepreneurs would do well to study this new world of manufacturing, especially given its potential to help them leapfrog, just as mobile telephony allowed a leapfrog over landlines. Given the Modi regime’s focus on Make In India, who knows, manufacturing just might turn out to the next sexy industry.
In conclusion, we might add that O’Reilly’s Solid conference, much as its name suggests, is a welcome return to a celebration of the physical world, or systems and processes that enable us to produce that physical object. The valley’s most celebrated innovations (and unicorns) have thus far been in dematerialized cyberspaces (google, facebook, twitter etc) or as software buttons to physical actions (uber, airbnb, amazon etc). In the Solid conference, we see a counterpoint to the above and a glimpse of a third world – a purely material universe, a world where much of tomorrow’s innovations are gathered.
(This is part I of a 2-part series on Solid conference and the world of IoT and Smart Manufacturing. Part II will feature a look at some of the interesting products and startups that presented at the conference.)
