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Comment by ryanmonroe | Hacker News Reader

If no people want or will use IoT connected devices, what motivation do companies have to sell only IoT devices? I don't understand the logic behind this prediction (only IoT products available, but no one wants them). It seems a bit like predicting that in the future people will still prefer to write on paper, but no companies will sell paper anymore, only tablets. Maybe there's a key motivating factor I'm missing?

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Because It'll let those same companies better understand you and thus better target you with advertisements for more products (or sell the data to others who want to sell to you).

Don't think for a second that that smart fridge that knows when you're running low on milk knows just so that it can alert you and be done with it. Most people will buy the thing and agree to an unreadable set of terms that allow them to use your data for advertising purposes without much thought. Then the fridge notices that you're low on milk and tells you "Hey, you're low on milk! Lucky for you, Target's got your favorite brand for 10% off with this coupon." You pay Target and Target pays FridgeCo.

They're motivated to sell this stuff whether or not you want it because it lets them build revenue streams in markets that they wouldn't otherwise have access to. The buyers of the information are motivated to pay for it because it means that they can learn far more about the individuals, not just the groups of individuals, who buy their products.

Because with IoT companies move consumers from owning the devices they buy to renting them. The company retains control of how the device is used, what content it displays, even if the device works or not. You make the consumers buying the device wholy dependent on being in the good graces of the company for their expensive device to not become a brick.

Big executive hears about it, thinks its 'the next big thing' and poors money into it. A second big executive hears that the previous company is doing it and they have to stay competitive. Their next flagship product has it and coincidentally does well. They attribute it to IoT and all of their products have it in a year. Then it spreads across the industry and no one has choice anymore.

I don't think multinational corporations are going to change their entire product line entirely on the basis of gossip about "the next big thing". Maybe some would, but surely not all. A decision like that would have to be made after doing some serious market research and testing sales of products with that feature against sales of products without it. If corporation A switched to only IoT devices and customers didn't want that, surely Corporation B which hasn't made the switch would gain more market share, then A would take note and switch back. There's too much money to be made by being the one company that still offers what consumers want. I don't understand this fear that profit-driven corporations will suddenly decide to add costly features in a world where no one wants them.

The history of consumer computing - especially the existence of the word "crapware" - suggests the opposite happens.

Corps tend to offer what execs think consumers want, based on a consumer model which is irrationally similar to an idealised version of the exec - who inevitably seems to think more is better, for very noisy values of "more".

Which is why printer driver installers, smartphones, operating systems, and hardware products all acquire barnacle encrustations of crapware that literally no consumer wants.

IoT could easily be more susceptible to this than desktop and mobile computing.

Corps that truly understand their customers are incredibly rare. Many corps seem to get along by throwing crap at the wall and hoping some of it sticks.

Genuine customer insight is practically a superpower.

We already have a great example. Look at all the money car companies are now pouring into self-driving cars. In reality, it's all marketing hype. Google's Self-Driving Cars are a decade from practicality, they're far more dangerous than human drivers if left to their own devices. We're actually not that much far further in automated driving than we were five years ago. But now that it's a topic of hype, everyone's dumping tens of millions into it.

Sure, we'll make some progress, but we might also be looking that this generation's version of the flying car. The magical leap forward in technology we keep believing is just around the corner.

Do you really think all the recent progress in autonomous vehicles is marketing hype? I disagree that we haven't come a long way in the last 5 years. Self driving cars are a lot more practical than the flying car.

https://medium.com/@scobleizer/don-t-worry-uber-lyft-drivers...

Almost every excited "self-driving cars are coming soon!" post quotes a single man. Chris Urmson, the lead of Google's project. He avoids mentioning the real limitations and roadblocks self-driving cars has, and continually talks about how he never wants his son to have a driver's license. He talks more fluff than substance, and he's misrepresented Google's progress pretty heavily. He's a great marketing voice for Google, but I have found very little merit to what he has to say.

When you actually look at the hard numbers, or other companies' more realistic progress reports, it paints a very different picture.

https://youtu.be/SfP7FBSnojk

I've found that to be true as well. Driverless cars can work reliably in a strictly controlled environment such as the Google campus gated community, but have very little chance of reliable functioning in the real, gritty world full of variables and uncertainties.

Worse yet, driverless cars will be forced to make tough ethical choices. Imagine a driverless car's brakes fail and it is headed for a pregnant woman. Should a car steer off the road and possibly kill the passenger(s) in order to save the pregnant woman? Who gets to decide what is the correct choice?

"Flying cars" (personal-sized VTOL vehicles) do exist. They're just expensive and unsafe for a normal person to drive.

Similarly, self-driving cars do exist. They're expensive, and unsafe for normal people to drive. :)

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