The “Internet of Things” is one of the hottest trends in tech right now, but is it really set to go the distance? And if so, what kinds of effects will it have on our lives in years to come?

Those were just some of the questions being pondered by the Pew Research Center Internet Project and Elon University, which recently published the results of a survey canvassing more than 1,600 experts about where IoT will be in the year 2025.

The report is a pretty balanced affair, and while it says that IoT will thrive by 2025, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be a good thing. Plenty of experts warn of the possible negative implications on privacy and other tech gremlins the IoT will have, though lots of others were keen to espouse many of its potential benefits.

Wearable tech’s wearing thin (for some)

One of the highlights is a surprising amount of negativity towards ‘wearable tech’, with many experts wondering if there’s really such a need for it. The report includes comments from Karl Fogel, a partner at Open Tech Strategies, who was especially dismissive of the technology.

“No, yuck, we don’t need this, and most people aren’t asking for it,” wrote Fogel. In his comments, Fogel wondered aloud whether Pew’s claim that 83% of respondents were positive about IoT was the result of bias, pointing out that most respondents would have had a vested interest in promoting it.

“If you are a skeptic why would you bother answering the survey?” said Fogel, who claimed he only commented because he thought the report was interesting.

But Lee Rainie, director of Pew’s Internet Project, dismissed this charge, noting that the research was based on an opt-in survey. As a result, the main thrust of the research is “qualitative” rather than “quantitative”. Even so, he admitted that while most respondents were positive about the Internet of Things, there were a lot of caveats to go with it.

Privacy’s friend or foe?

Another major caveat remains the issue of privacy. And when you see words like “prison-like” and “pernicious” used in a debate, you know that people are worried, just like college professor Peter Jacoby clearly is.

“The effects will be widespread but pernicious.” he writes. “We might as well inject ourselves into the Internet of Things. By 2025, we will have long ago given up our privacy. The Internet of Things will demand – and we will give willingly – our souls.”

Just as concerned is law professor Frank Pasquale, who warned that the IoT could turn our workplaces into ‘prisons’ if things are left unchecked. “As Rivera’s film Sleep Dealer shows, the workplace plugged into the Internet of Things will be more productive and more prison-like (or, to be more accurate, more like an ‘ankle monitor’ of the mind that upgrades scanning not merely to location, but also to observable ‘outputs’ like typing and eye movements).

But it’s not all that bad. Smart, wearable tech (if it catches on) could evolve to help protect our privacy as well, according to some of the surveyed experts.

Doc Searls, from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, predicts that the Internet of Things will develop a kind of ‘social decorum’, in which devices and services will have to ‘ask’ before tracking people or bombarding them with advertising.

“We will wear smart clothes and smart things,” he writes. The world will also be thick with smart things as well, including products for sale that communicate what they are, what they cost, and much more. Moderating between ourselves and the rest of the world will be systems of manners.

“So, for example, we might wear devices that signal an unwillingness to be followed, or to have promotional messages pushed at us without our consent. Likewise, a store might recognize us as an existing customer with an established and understood relationship. Google Glass today is a very early prototype and has little, if any, social manners built-in, which is why it freaks people out. New manners-friendly systems, and the protocols to go with them, will be worked out over the next five or so years.”

Information overload

One of the most optimistic respondents was Dave Clark, a senior research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In his comments, Clark wrote that “the ability to put a scan tag on ‘anything’ will create a much more fluid and interwoven linkage between things in the ‘real world’ and their cyber-counterparts.” Clark believes this will provide us with many benefits and conveniences – in the same way that GPS has led to a world where people no longer ‘get lost’, in a scannable world, people will always be able to get information from just about anything they encounter.

Nevertheless, Clark was also one of those who were somewhat wary about wearable tech. “Devices like Google Glass may become popular, or may fail to prove their worth. But in more than 10 years, I suspect some sort of device that gives a cyber-overlay on the real world will be in use. I am ambivalent about this future,” he wrote.

The jury might still be out on wearables and consumer applications in general, but the Industrial Internet holds far more promise, reckons Bob Briscoe, chief researcher in networking and infrastructure for British Telecom. He wrote that the IoT’s future is most likely to be realized in industry – in areas like supply chain logistics and automating workforce administration (e.g., dispensing healthcare, logging materials used in fitting and service of goods, vehicles, etc.,).

“Industrial and commercial applications are much more likely to have taken hold than these attention-grabbing consumer widgets, which have only superficial economic effect,” wrote Briscoe.

photo credits: PNNL – Pacific Northwest National Laboratory via photopin cc; Eye pyramid – LiquidSpace via Pixabay.com; photo credit: lyonora via photopin cc