''Connecting the Dots Around You'' by Ralf Lippold

Was given permission by Ralf Lippold who is a friend and business partner based in Dresden (we developed networking opportunities for young entrepreneurs between Athens and Dresden a few years ago under Founders Accelerating events organized in his hometown), to re-post one of his past articles as I thought it grasps the dynamics of how technology is shaping our lives nowadays. Read below and feel welcome to share your thoughts or leave your comments:


We hear it everyday in the news, "Internet of Things", "Cyberphysical Systems", "Smart Home", "Connected Car" - it sounds like a marketing "war" is being pushed on us. Do we really need this new technology? Why should I care?


Over five decades ago Jay W. Forrester created, more or less "forced" by several forces that came up around that time, the field system dynamics. In short system dynamics is "a computer-aided approach to policy analysis and design" which applies to dynamic problem challenges such as social, energy, managerial, economic and ecological issues in which we all are embedded in one or the other way.


"Why then should we care?"


"As a single person having to play to certain rules within society we have to play along in life, and society. This issue should be a topic for top level executives, politicians and policy makers to apply, wouldn't it?"


Yes, that could be one answer. However we all are not just "one" but many, certainly with very diverse life background, knowledge that we have accumulated over the years, and certain system contexts in which we have lived and worked up to today. Do we have the tools at hand that bring to our attention how our actions today make a difference in 1 day, 1 month or even 2 and 10 years from now? How do we see the impact in the future when we put several actions together at the same time (this actually is quite normal in our daily behavior, we seldom do just one thing during the day, we constantly perceive information that flows around us via ears, eyes, touch and other sensitive nerves that our body has, and react in one or the other way to it).


So why not extend what our body can sense on a very narrowly (person-based) focused way to a broader set of actions and outcomes?


Here is where the "Internet of Things" (or #IoT [the Twitter timeline in real-time] in short) comes in. But again, "why should I care for data and information that I don't care about? I just don't need 'big data'."


IoT makes (first of all) sense when it touches our very personal needs, at home for example. Just imagine you live in a country like Germany where in the winter temperatures are falling well below 0°C, and permanently installed heating systems in houses are a common thing. Wouldn't you be interested to know exactly the temperature in the various rooms, the moisture and -of course that is main trigger- how much energy you use on a daily basis (based on each room's consumption), which impacts directly your purse?


Having sensors build in at various points in the rooms, an electronic "bill board" in the main hall, where you can see what is really going on in the house over time would that be something worth considering?


I bet - at least for me living in an old house that has gone through various renovations, with central heating and thermostats but having no clue what the "real climate" in the rooms is neither how much energy is really flowing through each day (at the end of the year, most often with a delay of 5-10 months one gets notice from the utility company what the actual costs have been).


I ask you, "Is this the state of the art of the technology in the 21st century where smartphones and apps are in everybody's hands?"


Time to act small and #ScalingUp (Twitter feed on a most recently attended MOOC with Stanford professors Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao) smartly and bring learning about system dynamics to life within our very living sphere.