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Kevin Ashton: IoT turns Internet into giant nervous system

Xinhua, April 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

Kevin Ashton, the creator of the concept IoT (Internet of Things) on Tuesday said IoT turns the Internet into a giant nervous system so that companies should adapt to the change for avoiding value drop.

Kevin Ashton, also known "father of IoT," was invited as the global keynote speaker of South Korea's biggest IT conference " Entrue World 2015" in Seoul, which was held by the country's global IT service provider LG CNS. Over 1,500 experts from the industry and academia attend the event.

In his keynote speech, titled "From IT to IoT How companies transition to the Internet of Things," Ashton explained how IT companies are responding and transitioning to the IoT era and how IoT will reshape the industry.

Ashton described IoT as "the human nervous system" because they are both "distributed network of sensors" to detect the world around.

He said that all the information collected goes to "the cloud computer" in human brain by the nervous system to create a coherent, real-time and streaming picture of the world.

"What IoT is doing is making the network of Internet into a nerve system," said Ashton. "So when we talking about IoT, we are talking about the nerve system for humanity, the nerve system for a planet, a way to sense the real-time (information), a way to sense happening for human civilization, and make a better decision as a result."

He suggested businessmen should be careful as most IoT is " invisible." People can notice that around 3 billion smart phones have been sold each year, but they ignore that 1 billion more RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), an identification technology for IoT widely used in retail, supply line, security and other areas, have been sold worldwide each year.

Ashton used a curve, which looks like a shark's fin, to show how technology enterprises like Sony, Dell, Microsoft, Blackberry and others have experienced a dramatic increase of the enterprise value and then a slow fall after heading the peak during the technology market transition.

To avoid such drop, Ashton suggested technology enterprises try to adapt to the powerful transition from IT to IoT. He gave some successful cases of how companies like Belkin, Google and Telsa, commercializing their research on IoT such as developing smart appliances, wearable devices or self-drived cars.

"The challenge being conducted from our generation in the 21st century is to make the nervous system for the earth. And it is already getting over the earth," he said.

The CEO of LG CNS, Kim Dae-hoon, also delivered a keynote speech at the conference, emphasizing that it is important to be prepared for the changes since the market for services as well as devices is dramatically growing in IoT.

In 2001, Entrue World started as the first IT conference in South Korea. This year's Entrue World was held with the theme "The Internet of Smart Things: Accelerating Smart Business" in order to show IoT related solutions and services through smart technology convergence, as well as suggesting the changes which IoT will bring to businesses. Endi