‘Wearable tech’ is one of many verticals enabled by the Internet of Things. But it isn’t an i-watch that will bring about revolution, Apple or otherwise.
Rather a much more illusive ‘i’; an i-word responsible for Globalisation, the World Wide Web getting a little too personal and for how technology can change human behaviour.
The word is ‘interoperability’, and it’s your personal data that enables it.
Paradoxically, your data is locked in meaningless information silos. Towers of data about energy usage, health, diet, your media appetite, travel, shopping habits and fashion tastes; and with all the new-fangled widgets and gizmos that make up the Internet of Things, these towers are reaching dizzying heights. Do you remember the infamous butter mountains of the 80s? Warehouses full of overproduced dairy product due to flawed EU Common Agricultural Policy. We now have great big mountains of wasted data, meaningless, but with one unifying factor. You.
Whilst organisations compute the value of your data to them, or at least the segment of it they strived to capture, they rarely look outside their vertical sector. Hence the misplaced offers for products that you just bought, and the quizzical paranoia of your GP, who dare not diagnose in ignorance of the probable lifestyle causes.
Capturing data and writing software to transform it into actionable insight is only half the problem. Personalisation that genuinely improves peoples’ lives requires context, a shift from market touch point to individual intent. It requires organisations to open up and share siloed information, which combined with your behavioural data and personal preferences, for specific times of day or event types such as work or leisure, can truly amplify its utility and value. Our colleagues at the Hub-of-All-Things (HAT) put it like this:
Enable iD is wholly focused on opening up vertical sectors to new markets. As Europe’s first licensed HAT Platform Provider, we help organisations develop products and services that deliver improved performance by harnessing and giving you ownership and control of your data. That way they get better at what they do and you get a better you.
