Can Twitter (and other human) “signals” add to the Internet of Things?

A house down the street from mine was reported as burglarized last week. And two weeks ago a tree limb fell on an electrical line and knocked out power in my neighborhood for a couple of hours. How did I come to know about each of these incidents? Did my home security system get notified based on a report pushed from my local sheriff’s office? Nope. Did PG&E automatically alert my Nest thermostat that my heating system wouldn’t be functioning? Once again, no. I was alerted about both through a social network called nextdoor.com (as a side note, I’m flat out amazed at how quickly activities in my small neighborhood are reported on). These recent events got me thinking about the Internet of Things (IoT) and how signals from non-devices might impact behaviors within connected systems.

At the highest level, IoT is about interconnected things processing relevant signals and translating them into actionable behaviors. The discussion so far has been primarily related to communication among devices/sensors and automating services within closed networks (check out last year’s TED talk from Marco Annunziata, GE’s Chief Economist, for some inspiring examples). After thinking about the recent events reported on nextdoor.com, I’m wondering if there’s a place in the IoT end game to include processing of human-initiated signals (such as those real-time reporting activities) to complement machine-based input. The answer is definitely yes. But how far can/will it go? Can human-based analytical content (like the manual evaluation of a business plan) and possibly even physical actions (such as a surgeon’s first incision) effectively complement machine-based data to support decision-making? Some of this may be a bit of a stretch, but I’m willing to bet that Google, Facebook, and Twitter are all trying to figure out how such content can be fed into the IoT ecosystem to help further its vision and value.

The truth is, competing industry connectivity standards, along with unprecedented security and privacy concerns, are complicating IoT to a large degree. And while that all gets worked out, we'll continue to see semi-closed systems of interconnected devices and services as we try to envision a utopia of secure and privacy-sensitive sharing of device-based and human-based signals.