IoT to be beneficial to humanity?

My grandfather was born in 1890. I recently realized that over his lifetime he had seen electricity arrive in households, automobiles transforming the cities and countryside alike and telecommunications changing our world.

I have been living for over half a century now and already witnessed a few revolutions in our day-to-day life, the most important being the internet: making almost all the knowledge of humanity available to each of us at our fingertips.

The IoT revolution is probably due to change our lives in an even more dramatic way. The promises of technology evolution is that we will no longer have to drive, to take care of our houses or do daily chores.

IoT in healthcare will revolutionize the way we are taken care of and the way we deal with our own health. Taking care of babies and the elderly will be totally different from what it has always been since the beginning of humanity.

The autonomous car will change the way we travel be it on day to day commuting or on long distance trips. Traveling from a place to another will be a lot smoother once the imperfect human drivers will no longer be able to bring their nuisance on the road.

Besides IoT the revolution is coming from biometrics. Already selfies are used to authenticate payments, and in the near future, a biometric authentication will be all that’s needed to pay for public transportation. With biometrics, all our personal interactions with machines and systems can be made easier and smother.

At the same time, the expansion of IoT, biometrics a few other technologies can become a threat to our freedom, to our decision autonomy, and even to our integrity. Regulating creativity has never worked, so we can only count on human wisdom for this technology not to become a threat.

IoT is triggering a wave of creativity as never before. What is still missing is a humanist and philosopher approach to ensure the IoT revolution will be beneficial to humanity.