Guerrilla thinking

It’s one of our predictions for year 2012: the internet of things will become more and more real.

If you are a geek you probably own or at least heard about NABAZTAG, a wifi enabled rabbit that could read RFD stamps you “show” to his face.
For every stamp you could set up an action that the rabbit could perform (such as sending emails, reading the news and so on).

That was just the beginning. And for many reasons it wasn’t that much successful.
But smart objects are coming back.

And at Guerrilla Thinking we think this time is for good.

Before checking out why this upcoming revolution is due to change our life in a short term, let’s clarify what smart objects actually are: object of daily life that self connect to the internet and do tasks for you.
Things like an intelligent fridge that understands when you ran out of milk and order that from the store nearby or a dishwasher that sends a maintenance request directly to its manufacturer. 

Of course you’d like them right?
But so far they’re not so affordable in the market and the technology behind them is a pain.
Not for long. The real revolution is approaching fast. And here’s why

1) VISUAL INTERACTION IS DEAD. WE SOON WILL NOT NEED IT ANYMORE.

this is a huge one.
In the beginning it was the keyboard. If you wanted to move an object from A to B you had to type some code and let the machine understand what it was supposed to do.
Then a guy named Steve Jobs showed up and said: you know what? when I want a thing a point at it: here’s a pointer and here’s a mouse to move it along.
And we all loved the mouse until we asked ourselves why we could not simply touch a thing on a screen and move it where we liked.
We dreamt about “minority report” like interfaces and we got the iPad and the iPhone that literally changed the way we used to interact.
Wanna click, REAL click. Touch the button and you go.

Was it over? No. iPhone 4S SIRI introduced the next level: visual interaction-free smartphone. Using SIRI is awesome, trust us. And this is just the first generation.
Can you imagine how smart and incredible this will be in a short time? 

The evolution of the way mankind interacts with computer brings us directly to a world where we will not be needing a visual interface to interact anymore.
We have already started not to want it in some ways.
Being “hands free” today means being visual interaction free.

It’s all about VOICE.

And it’s not the future. It’s happening all around you with XBOX 360 voice controls, SIRI and TV. It’s a fact. In the near future we will not be using visual interfaces anymore to interact. Of course we will have screens to look and enjoy contents but the interaction will be mostly voice-based.

Our voice fishing data from the cloud will be what it takes.

What has this got to do with connected smart objects? Everything.
Changing our perception of what the web is will enable us to want more from the things that exist around us.
When you can talk to your phone (and soon tablet?) and get it to do anything you like, you start wondering why you can’t do the same with your tv and car.
And in order to respond to your voice your daily objects will have to be connected in the cloud one to the other and to you.

2) WE WANT EVERYTHING TO BE CONNECTED.

Just like we soon will think of visual interaction as a thing from the past, sooner than you may think we will live in a world where things are connected and talk to each other.

And we love the idea. You love it too, trust us.

People, you and us really want this. Maybe some of you still don’t know it, but as soon as a connected device hits the web it immediately become an object to worship and wish. Think about the nabaztag, when it hit the market (too soon) it aroused a lot of expectations. But the clumsy web interface and the lack of intelligence in the rabbit made it fail.
But the web has taken giant leaps forward ever since the rabbit started running in our prairie and if a new version of the rabbit able to read your email and respond to you SIRI-style hit the market now, we are quite sure that would be a success.

And check out how much money a project called twine raised on kickstarter.com and you will get to the point. It’s a wifi connected object with a bunch of sensors that can perform an action every time something around him happens.
Just to give you an idea, you can place it in your basement and with its water sensor it will drop you an email in case of flooding. 

Imagine that integrated to your washing machine, your dishwasher, your car, your key lock and whatever you can think of.

Internet of things it’s cool and simple. And since people want it, the market will soon follow the desire to make money out of it.

3)  SMART OBJECTS CAN TRACK YOU DOWN BIG BROTHER STYLE

YES. We said it.

We are not really worried about this conspiracy theory  that we are all under surveillance. Some say Facebook is just another way for the government to track any action we do.

We simply believe that the MARKET needs our data. And social media is an enormous source of data.  Credit cards are a source of data, online browsing is a source of data.

But can you imagine how many data your daily objects could pass to the market analysts? Can you imagine if any action we take from driving to a store to watching tv could be tracked down, stored and analyzed?
No more assumptions on consumer behaviors based on hypothesis and statistics.
The market analysts could take advantage of INDIVIDUAL behaviors, match them together and have a clear view of what’s going on in the market.

Sounds creepy, doesn’t it? But that’s the way it is.
Because market leaders need more and more data from their customers, they will push smart objects to the market.
As simple as that. 

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

The market needs you to be more and more connected.
And you love it and want it too.
Smart objects will soon be what you want. 
And that’s all folks. As simple as that.