FastCompany published a great article today about the IoT (Internet of Things if you’re not already onboard with the abbreviation) and how more consumers will be getting holiday gifts that are connected, interconnected and able to be uber-connected… to monitoring software, data collection mechanisms and ad platforms they’ve never heard of, barely know exist and certainly don’t understand will be tracking them.
Obviously, we’re all about the IoT, and we are firm believers in constant contact with one’s customer base and adaptive marketing offers that enable everyone to gain something from the potential transactions.
The real question is backlash – will there be any? Or will the world settle into a space where a virtual Elf on a Shelf is recording (via your TV or other camera/mic enabled appliance/electronic gadget) your every word/move/action for later parsing, and to what end? Many popular electronics devices such as SmartTVs won’t function totally or properly if you don’t enable them to monitor the room when they’re showing TV (or just in the room in some cases, we are told), and our mobile phones have been spying on us for at least two years, perhaps even more.
How will this play out when the average user realizes that it’s too late to backtrack and that our data does not really belong to us? Somehow we can’t really see people chucking their tv’s to the curb, tossing their mobile devices into tin foil lined bags when not in use, but then again, ten years ago if you’d told most people they would be airing their personal details on social media, they wouldn’t have had a clue what social media was, much less what it would become with their willing participation.