Does The Future of Internet of Things Mean Our Jobs Are At Risk

BY

19 July 2016

Internet Of Things

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Provided the major concern of Internet of Things security is addressed, there's every chance it will dominate our everyday lives. With machines taking on more and more responsibility, opportunities for humans may decrease. Will we be losing out to machines when it comes to career opportunities? In the short term, IoT devices are not yet evolved enough to replace humans when it comes to the majority of tasks. However, considering the growth of IoT, 20 billion devices and counting, humans may be on the verge of becoming redundant.

Telstra has identified the potential of IoT. A Telstra SIM connection now allows Tesla cars to connect to the internet. With this, the car can communicate with other devices. For example, if your garage was also an IoT device, it could send notifications to your car, informing you that you left the garage open. You could then remotely close the garage. It's this technology that could soon see the introduction of driverless cars.

Cars Join The Internet of Things

In the driverless world, the car's control system, rather than the human driver, will make use of information gained from different sources. Waze is a mobile application that provides information on traffic conditions and relays that back to the driver. It collects your individual data and combines it with data from other cars to produce a traffic congestion map. Technically, it does know where your car is. Much like our Innovation Platform, new technologies have opened the gates for automatic solutions. What does this have to do with the IoT? Consider your car as one big puzzle comprised of many little puzzle pieces. With IoT, these little puzzle pieces can communicate amongst each other. For example, your car's Bluetooth-enabled tires will be able to talk to your in-car control system, and communicate when tyre pressure is low. This doesn't end at tyre pressure, it will essentially result in self-maintained cars.

So if cars are able to maintain themselves, what happens to mechanics? This is where IoT devices pose a threat to our jobs. Obviously, it can't supplement mechanics entirely, but it would see a reduction in customers. It's not limited to the automobile industry either. But a reduction in these markets may see job gains in other markets as companies try to exploit IoT technology. However, we're a long way from cars maintaining themselves. For now, there isn't much chance you'll be shown the door to make room for a machine.

But is the increase in IoT devices a bad thing? Could you imagine if we could relax while machines did all the work for us. Sounds a bit like a sci-fi series. Cue the part where the machines rise up against us. No-one can say for sure what technology will be like in 5, 10, 50 years. What we can say is that IoT will no doubt play an important role as technology advances.

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David Burkett

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