Link: http://www.etc-architect.com/?p=118
Many companies want to make us think that the IoE is the only way forward and that this create the boost of economy that we require. The main problem I can see is that most people dreaming of the IoE have not done their home work and are into solution country long time before implementing it. The main challenges for the IoE is that many people want to keep control of their life without the need to describe that control. I know that this statement sounds strange, but as humans we have some inbuilt patterns and all these patterns drive us to control many parts of our life.
Actually if you forcefully remove the ability to control from any human he will start to display signs of instability. Now you may argue that technology offers us to set controls by using settings and all will be fine. However we have an inbuilt mistrust to rely solely on settings that we cannot control, as well as a tendency to want to exercise our free will outside of the patterns supplied to us. This is also why most repressive political systems have failed in the past.
Many architects and IT related people, as well as most young people, will go further with letting technology rule a large portion of our life as we understand more about the subject, but even here we can already see serious mental problems of all that life to much apart from the real world. So for some having 8 networked devices in a IoE is fine, for some a single smart phone is too much, but to think that everyone and everything will be connected is something that will backfire.
So for us architects this means that we need to be extremely careful and also consider how much connectivity a group of people can bear. You may say that this is outside of your decision, but I will tell you that once the problems start all those decision leaders are gone faster than you think and you as the senior subject matter expert will be questioned. But even when you will not let that count please just think about yourself or those that you care.
Therefore the real question facing us is not about the IoE or intranets of things, but how much digitalisation each of us can cope with.
