Smart isn't cheap

What would you think of a refrigerator that senses when your milk supply is low and sends you an alert? How about a coffee maker that responds to signals from your wearable fitness monitor and turns itself on when you wake up? Or, picture a clothes dryer that senses from your smart thermostat that your house is empty and automatically reverts to a slower, energy-saving cycle.

These technological innovations are just a few examples of what’s being called the “Internet of Things”—everyday devices containing sensors and radios that connect with other devices as well as the internet—a major theme of last month’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

While many of the smart gadgets on display at CES were preproduction demonstrations, the Internet of Things has already become big business, with some analysts estimating that sales of “smart” security and energy systems will amount to $574 million this year—up 23 percent from 2014.

But this first generation of connected devices is very expensive—one of the reasons many tech watchers believe the Internet of Things may never reach its potential.

“Who needs a $99 ‘smart’ light bulb or a $99 ‘smart’ toothbrush?” notes futurist Dominic Basulto in The Washington Post. “There are a limited number of items that people are going to pay a premium price for.”

Some items, such as the Nest Learning Thermostat, might bring eventual cost savings, but other items—such as an internet-connected belt—notes Basulto, seem to promise much less in the way of cost savings or even quality of life improvements. “Many consumers see the Internet of Things as a marketing gimmick meant to sell them more things that they don’t need.”

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to a fully realized Internet of Things is a lack of standards. Internet-connected devices built by one company can’t talk to those built by another because the communications protocols are different, and many tech companies want their protocols to prevail as the universal standard.

This lack of universal interoperability reminds technology writer Mike Elgan of what former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée called the “basket of remotes” problem.

“Most TV owners have a ‘basket of remotes’ that remain forever confusing, incompatible, unprogrammed and mostly unused,” he writes in Computer World. “If we can’t figure out a simple problem like self-programming TV remotes, how are we going to build a self-programming, universal and compatible ‘Internet of Things’?”

‘Augmented reality’

Unlike its competitors, Apple and Google, Microsoft has not been known for its groundbreaking technological innovation. But the company’s announcement last month of a new headset, the HoloLens, which allows the wearer to interact with holographic images, has technology analysts excited.

The holographic displays of a HoloLens device are not strictly virtual reality, or an alternative version of “reality” that displaces the real world. The HoloLens uses see-through lenses, which display what is called “augmented” reality, in which virtual 3-D objects are displayed alongside the real world.

“It blew me away,” wrote The New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo after a demonstration at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters. “And it suggests that interacting with holograms could become an important part of how we use machines in the future.” —M.C.