{"id":93494,"date":"2017-06-06T09:50:54","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T14:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/2017\/06\/06\/the-internet-of-things-connectivity-binge-what-are-the-implications\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T04:18:27","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:18:27","slug":"the-internet-of-things-connectivity-binge-what-are-the-implications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/2017\/06\/06\/the-internet-of-things-connectivity-binge-what-are-the-implications\/","title":{"rendered":"The Internet of Things Connectivity Binge: What Are the Implications?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Connection begets connection. In 1999, 18 years ago, when just 4% of the world\u2019s population was online, Kevin Ashton coined the term<\/a> Internet of Things, Neil Gershenfeld of MIT Media Lab wrote the book \u201cWhen Things Start to Think<\/a>,\u201d and Neil Gross wrote in BusinessWeek<\/a>: \u201cIn the next century, planet Earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies \u2013 even our dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

He was right. Today, 49% of the world\u2019s population is connected online and an estimated<\/a> 8.4 billion connected things are in use worldwide.<\/p>\n\n

The stickiness and value of a connected life will be far too strong for a significant number of people to have the will or means to disconnect.\nAnonymous respondent<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

The Internet of Things (IoT) is in full flower. The expanding collection of connected things goes mostly unnoticed by the public \u2013 sensors, actuators and other items completing tasks behind the scenes in day-to-day operations of businesses and government, most of them abetted by machine-to-machine \u201ccomputiction\u201d \u2013 that is, artificial-intelligence-enhanced communication. The most public items in the burgeoning IoT are cars<\/a>, voice-activated<\/a> assistants, appliances and other home systems, physician-prescribed or recommended health-monitoring devices<\/a>, road sensors<\/a>, public-safety<\/a> and security devices<\/a>, smart meters<\/a> and personal fitness and health<\/a> trackers for people and animals \u2013 dogs, cats<\/a>, horses<\/a>, cows<\/a> and more. And then there are emerging IoT products that show how the urge to create connectivity extends to such prosaic items as toothbrushes, dental floss, hairbrushes, pillows, egg trays, wine bottle sleeves, baby monitors and changing tables, silverware, umbrellas, all manner of toys<\/a> and sporting goods<\/a> and remote-controlled pet food dispensers<\/a>, to name a few.<\/p>\n\n

The very connectedness of the IoT leaves it open to security and safety vulnerabilities<\/a>. Every connected thing is susceptible to attack or misuse. In September 2016 at DEF CON, one of the world\u2019s largest security conferences, 47 vulnerabilities<\/a> affecting 23 IoT-enabled items (door locks, wheelchairs, thermostats and more) from 21 manufacturers were disclosed. Soon after, there was a massive distributed denial-of-service<\/a> (DDoS) attack on Oct. 21, 2016, against Dyn, an internet performance management company. The attack was accomplished when tens of millions of IoT-connected devices like printers, DVRs, cable set-top boxes, webcams and baby monitors were used to launch the DDoS and block Dyn\u2019s ability to connect internet users to the web addresses they hoped to access, such as Twitter, Amazon, PayPal, Spotify, Netflix, HBO, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. A simple software program called Mirai was used to create the botnet that initiated the attack.<\/p>\n\n

After the Dyn attack, a report in The New York Times called the IoT a \u201cweapon of mass disruption<\/a>.\u201d While that assault amounted to nothing more than a short-lived slowdown of a large portion of the internet, it showed how vulnerable connected devices are to hacking and exploitation. In recent weeks, a ransomware attack named WannaCry<\/a> affected computers in 150 countries, and its creators demanded payments from those whose computers were compromised before releasing their files. Experts pointed out how dramatically this attack\u00a0highlighted<\/a> the vulnerabilities of the IoT.<\/p>\n\n

Researchers have been showing how easy it is to hack cars<\/a>, voting machines<\/a> and power plants<\/a>. They have demonstrated ransomware<\/a> exploits against home thermostats<\/a> and exposed vulnerabilities in implanted heart pacemakers<\/a>. In one paper, \u201cIoT Goes Nuclear,\u201d<\/a> analysts showed how a flaw in the design of smart lightbulbs could be used for a \u201cbricking attack\u201d that kills all of a city\u2019s traffic lights. Within the past year Bryan Johnson<\/a> (Kernal), Elon Musk<\/a> (Neuralink) and Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> (Facebook\u2019s Building 8) have announced initiatives to create an effective consumer-grade brain-computer interface<\/a> thus, of course, hacking a person\u2019s brain<\/a> could also be a future security issue.<\/p>\n\n

All of this has prompted concern among internet security experts, including Bruce Schneier<\/a>, who delivered a fiery speech at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development\u2019s Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in June 2016. He predicted that unless technology-based businesses and governments address these problems, there might be a flight from connectivity \u2013 that is, people could start retreating offline as risks mount. \u201cMy guess is we are reaching the high-water mark of computerization and connectivity,\u201d he said, \u201cand in a few years we are going to be deciding what to connect and what to disconnect and become more realistic about what can work. We are creating a society by which a totalitarian government can control everything. Right now it\u2019s more power to the powerful. And we are living in a computerized world where attacks are easier to create than defenses against them. This is coming faster than we think. We need to address it now. People up to now have been able to code the world as they see fit. That has to change. We have to make moral, ethical and political decisions about how these things should work and then put that into our code. Politicians and technologists still talk past each other. This has to change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Thus, the question: Could security vulnerabilities that become evident as the IoT rolls out prompt people, businesses and government to avoid or withdraw from certain online connectivity options? In summer 2016, Pew Research Center and Elon University\u2019s Imagining the Internet Center conducted a large canvassing of technologists, scholars, practitioners, strategic thinkers and other leaders, asking them to react to this framing of the issue:<\/p>\n\n

As billions more everyday objects are connected in the Internet of Things, they are sending and receiving data that enhances local, national and global systems as well as individuals\u2019 lives. But such connectedness also creates exploitable vulnerabilities. As automobiles, medical devices, smart TVs, manufacturing equipment and other tools and infrastructure are networked, is it likely that attacks, hacks or ransomware concerns in the next decade will cause significant numbers of people to decide to disconnect, or will the trend toward greater connectivity of objects and people continue unabated?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Some 1,201 responded to this nonscientific canvassing: 15%<\/strong> of these particular respondents said significant numbers would disconnect and 85% <\/strong>chose the option that most people will move more deeply into connected life. (See \u201cAbout this canvassing of experts<\/a>\u201d for further details about the limits of this sample.)<\/p>\n\n

Participants were asked to explain their answers and were offered the following prompts to consider:<\/p>\n\n