What I love about technology is its perpetual waves of innovation. But among the challenges in creating something innovative — including dark arts like extending battery life, increasing storage density, tripling optical fiber capacity — is a seemingly pedestrian one: vocabulary. OK fine, your cool new gizmo spins and breathes fire in 3D, but what do you call it? Language, usually our helper in making connections, can fail us as we struggle to describe what’s possible and what’s new.
That goes double these days in the machine-to-machine (M2M) or Internet of Things (IoT) world. (See that? I’m not even sure what to call the universe I’m talking about.) In my zeal for the revolutionary transformation of things into connected things, I talk to lots of innovators who say they spend as much time experimenting with the right words and phrases as they do securing capital, winning early customers, and making their offerings really work.
It’s not a simple-minded search for a wizardly incantation… as in, ‘say the magic word and 1,000 M2M customers materialize’. A very real part of the work in growing the world of connected things towards that 50 billion unit target (an estimate now credited to Mary Meeker, of all people!) is unlocking people’s imagination — which has to be done in part with words.
A few thoughts on M2M vocabulary from those trying to coin its language:
- “Internet-enabled”? In talking about connected things, I frequently encounter people who question why some thing — lamp post, pallet, piano — would want to be connected. Robert Mawrey, CEO of ioBridge, likes this term because it emphasizes the general benefit that connectivity brings — the entire digital world, delivered to the item in question. (And for ioBridge, those items include cranberry bogs. Stay tuned for an upcoming post with an interview of a bog farmer who ‘Internet-enabled’ his cranberries. Seriously.)
- “Smart” isn’t always smart: One way to solve the question of why a thing should be connected is to emphasize that it gets more intelligent. DigitalLumens bills itself as a developer of “intelligent lighting systems.” But CEO Tom Pincince says, “We don’t sell to people who do lights like IT people do databases. Our buyers don’t do lights, they just use lights. So we have to back up “intelligent” with the real-world benefits that are important to them: energy savings, flexibility, safety, automation. It’s probably Marketing 101 — but benefits, not features, are paramount.” The DigitalLumens website now immediately zeroes in on the specific reasons why smart lighting is smart… but the word ‘smart’ takes a backseat.
- “The social network for things”: Michael Campbell, CEO of M2M middleware firm SensorLogic, tried this term on me recently. One of the technical issues that could actually impair the expansion of more connected things is thoughtful software that will help us humans filter useful insight from our things’ constant chatter. But instead of labeling it “middleware”, why not talk about a social graph for things? Axeda, a competitor, uses “the cloud platform for connected things.” Borrowing a metaphor whose power people already understand might be smart. ”You’ll see us start to weave this notion into our marketing soon, saying ‘machines have voices, too.’ We’ll have some fun with this, which is needed in this space,” Campbell told me.
- But “M2M” itself ain’t working. Maybe the term bloomed too soon, back in the earlier days of the mobile revolution, leaving people with a sense of empty hype — but “M2M” doesn’t clarify what’s in, or what’s out, of our intentions in talking about connected devices. Tablets and e-readers counted as M2M items? Technically, yes; they’re certainly connected things that talk to other things. But some people don’t realize those are included in that sweeping term, instead associating “M2M” either with out-there science-fiction or with connected items that are extremely remote from their day-to-day lives, such as factory-floor automation. And when they don’t get the idea, the term isn’t going to help us. I asked someone recently for a suggested replacement for the term, and they said “M2E”, or machine-to-everything. Cute — but still, Geek City.
Words matter. Searching for the just right word is a noble preoccupation, one done by Shakespeare, Hemingway… to say nothing of all you Scrabble and Lexulous fans. Tell me your connected things vocabulary stories — I’d love to build the complete dictionary.
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