The Internet of Things (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)

Far from being a balanced look at the IoT, this book is 88% boosterism, 12% tepid "reality" (to borrow from a chapter title). It's written for people who feel grateful when they're being bombarded by ads, because the advertisers are making so many helpful suggestions (see, e.g. the concluding "day in the life" set in 2025). Even the first few pages of the "reality" chapter are spent on breathless excitement about the IoT's possibilities, before rushing through a very selective list of downsides. The most fundamental issues, such as who owns the data thrown off by every appliance, Fitbit, Internet-connected article of clothing, and "smart" whatever, are entirely ignored. Nor is it ever pointed out that there might be something sociopathic about the way the IoT is obsessed, to hear the author tell it, with selling you more stuff while siphoning off every personal detail about you. The author does mention the potential for crime and terrorism, but ignores the potential for war: defense analysts I've spoken to here in Japan worry about scenarios like some North Korean team shutting off all the "smart" fridges in Tokyo, or all the power to hospitals, during a heat wave. (Nonetheless, Japan's growth-obsessed government is pushing IoT as part of "Abenomics.") BTW, the index misses lots of stuff. The best I can say for this book is that I'll probably use some passages from it in one of the college courses I teach: so that my students can learn to recognize and deflate over-the-top technophilic hype.

A glossy mostly optimistic overview of the up and coming internet of things. Fairly light weight. Think of it as the ‘executive summary’. Worth a quick read if you are not familiar with the changes and their potential impact. The optimism is duly muted by some considerations of security issues and increased openings to criminal activities. But like it or not it’s rapidly arriving.Some of the potential perils of smart objects highly interconnected are well chronicled in Red Dwarf. In the ongoing saga of Dave Lister’s fractured and acrid relationship with his uppity, demanding and quite obnoxious smart toaster. Anybody for some toast. Oh come on, have some toast.

I has high hopes for this book, based on the excellent earlier titles in this "Essential knowledge" series by MIT Press. The other books are snappy, thought-provoking, sharply written, and have no fluff. Just solid substance jam-packed into 100-ish pages. This series reminds me of the high "insight per page density" of O'Reilly Nutshell series (the one with the critter covers).This title does not fit that mold. I agree with the other reviewers in their disappointment. The book is completely unstructured and reads like a 200 page long stream-of-consciousness essay, with little new insight. It seemed like it was written in a hurry and read like an initial draft. It is also backward-looking rather than forward-looking; focusing mostly on trends that have already happened. I was expecting to see some frameworks to make sense of iOT, some insight into fundamental tensions and tradeoffs to get a bigger picture looking at the future. This title was a disappointment. I recommend saving your money and instead starting with the Wikipedia entry on iOT.

Samuel begins his book The Internet of Things with the observation “It is incredibly easy to overlook the full impact of the technology on our world”. What follows throughout the remaining pages is birth, evolution, the positive and negative impact of what is popular known as IoT. This is a complex subject with many technical terms like ARPANET,Ethernet, Mobility, cloud, digital tools, RFID, Sensors and the list is endless. The author is able to articulate a story line around each of these terms by using examples from everyday objects we have used or have heard about. The reading is interesting as soon as you realize that with or without our conscious knowledge, we have all contributed to the development of the IoT.

Totally unstructured - reads like a list of random facts the author has found through Google research. No interesting framework or point of view is put forward.

A good grasp of the invasive nature of electronic exchange of information and data is "Essential Information". This is a very good discussion of what it is and how it will impact everything.

Well written and packaged nicely! Good quality paper binding...

School related

Useful little book with a short but interesting introduction to the subject.If you want more detail there are plenty of other books - but this is a good start, I read in on the commute over a couple of days and now have a passing idea of what the IoT is going to do for us.I have also read  The Silent Intelligence: The Internet of Things  which goes into rather more detail. The Silent Intelligence: The Internet of Things

The book contains some valuable information. It reads like an incredibly long advertisement text, however, which gets really annoying after a couple of pages. It is as if the author wants to sell the Internet of Things. Most of the information is repeated over and over again. So after the first chapter, not much new can be expected. Concepts like cloud computing are not explained clearly, but rather like they would be explained in and advertisement text: superficial and sensational. Overall an annoying and not informative read.

Graphic design quality and simple clear English o

Really good book about how technology is likely to change our lives. However, I was expecting more insights over the technical background of IoT with discussion around the challenges of M2M communications and protocols (e.g. OPC-UA)

Very good.