Editorial Director David Mantey speaks with Oleg Logvinov of STMicroelectronics and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) on the role implantables will play in predictive and preventative human maintenance. (Credit: Eric Sorensen)

Engineering Live hosted three experts on the Internet of Things: Oleg Logvinov of STMicroelectronics and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Roberto Minerva of the IEEE IoT initiative and Telecom Italia and Y.K. Chen, principal researcher at Intel Corporation, and member of the IEEE IoT initiative.

They’re all connected people themselves – Chen has about a dozen cameras and 80 devices at home. All three talked about the need for balance in how people interact with IoT during the roundtable panel discussion.

“It’s not about creating a perfect technology," Logvinov said. “A quest for the perfect technology may be way too long and probably even impossible and impractical for real implementation. What we need to create is a balance. "

But what if we don’t have that balance? Minerva predicts that humanity’s relationship with IoT will result in one of three scenarios, only one of them beneficial. The worst case scenarios paint the user as a consumer, bombarded with advertisements, or a victim of Big Brother, constantly watched by their employer or the authorities. In Minerva’s best case scenario, the user trades data for services evenly: for example, users share data with Facebook because they receive the ability to keep in touch with family and friends in return.

The key to this scenario is the user’s personal choice. “There should be, in the connected person, the ability to totally disconnect and be left alone," Minerva said.

At its best, IoT could make life more convenient, allow older people to live independently longer, and maybe make science fiction a reality.

“Some people will be adventurous enough and want to be augmented and become this super human being," Logvinov said.

All three panels said that, at this point, they are wary of implantable devices that could alter the way people think.

It all comes back to balance. Minerva discussed separating the ways people interact IoT into work or “official" personas or private personas, separate data points gathered at different times. Likewise, he said, maybe one day people should be able to choose to be monitored by surveillance cameras when they are walking at night in an unfamiliar city, but not in their own neighborhood.

In the case of monitoring the health of the elderly, devices that are nearly invisible, and therefore carry no social stigma, could raise the most concerns about people being monitored without their knowledge, Chen said. “Technology can help. If the camera can become smaller and more invisible, that can become a problem as well."

Minerva asked whether we or our data have “a right to be forgotten," a right to disconnect, to erase the impact we’ve had on IoT.

Whatever happens next, the panel was certain that IoT isn’t going to go away, and outlined why this can be a very good thing for engineers.

“You need architects, you need semiconductor designers and software designers, you need cloud architects, you need cloud architects, you need data analytical experts," said Logvinov. “So a very, very large number of disciplines. It’s a great market for people who are now entering the educational process and looking for what to do with their knowledge later on. It’s an exciting time to be an engineer."

See the whole panel, including more commentary about the future of IoT, implantables, and data as currency, at Engineering Live.

• Implantables
• Regulatory
• Exclusive