Estate Living Magazine Develop - Issue 44 August 2019 | Page 34

I N V E S T
&
d e v e l O P
CONNECTIVITY–THE
ESSENTIAL BUILDING
BLOCK FOR
SMART
MOVEMENTS
The future of ‘Smart’ everything – leveraging digital technology to do just about anything more efficiently
– is inextricably linked to our ability to ‘connect’ via the internet. ‘Smart’ anything and ‘Smart’ everything
will depend on a frenzied exchange of data with, within and between people, entities, things and
machines. The actual connection required for this exchange – in terms of speed and accessibility – will
be as critical as available and adequate bandwidth is, or we risk losing out on the next wave of the
internet. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is what the gurus the world over are calling this next wave.
The first wave of the internet was connecting people to data
via the world wide web in the 1990s; the next wave was about
connecting people to people, via email, Facebook and Twitter
in the 2000s; and now we’re connecting people to ‘things’ and
‘things to things’ without people necessarily getting involved
in the transaction. The technology industry calls this part of
the wave ‘the Internet of Things’ or, more dryly, ‘machine to
machine’ communications. But this is just one of the prominent
use cases in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Some of the other
use cases currently leading the charge are artificial intelligence
(AI), virtual reality (VR) and the smart city concept.
We’ve all heard that the potential applications are endless:
exchanging speed and proximity data, cars could
automatically avoid or moderate collisions; a wrist-worn heat
monitor could continuously communicate with your doctor’s
system, only alerting you and your doctor if needed; a farm
irrigation control system could communicate with a local
weather station to automatically save water prior to a rain
event. In addition, local capabilities such as e-Government,
health, education, security, agriculture, municipal management
and other sectors, will play a major role in delivering efficiency
and efficacy into the system, and streamlining the processes
and parameters required to allow us as a country to grow and