Can China crack the Internet of Things?
It’s heralded as TNBT (the next big thing), high on any self respecting futurist’s to do list for 2012. Yet industry insidersremain sceptical that the Internet of Things (IoT) will reach fruition, this year, at least. They cite costs, technical prowess, planning and government support as some of the hurdles which need to be negotiated before we can get on the road to technological nirvana (or anti privacy hell, as some would have it) and our environment, buildings, vehicles, clothing and devices are all sensing, communicating, networking and producing masses of beautiful data.
However, in China, costs, technical prowess, planning and government support would not appear to be a problem. The country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology implied last month, in its 12th Five-year Development Plan of the Internet of Things, that it will actually be bringing forwards development goals and roadmaps for IoT, together with further measures to support and promote the development of the industry.
This month Beijing invested in a laser writing scheme for pork products. The capital city consumes 30,000 pigs a day over the New Year period and it’s the national favourite meat. However, eating pork can be dangerous: 4 million pounds of it had to be recalled by the government last year after pigs from central provinces were found to have been injected with a fat-reducing drug. Even if the meat is safe, many Chinese complain of water being injected into the meat to increase its weight.
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