I'm not a technofuturist of any sort, so maybe I'm the wrong person to be
commenting on IoT (or maybe I'm exactly the right person)... but stuff in
IoT land is going to get utterly horrible before it gets good. I'd argue
that it might already be horrible, but it just doesn't have the penetration
to be fully recognized.

Object lessons:

   - Your Jeep can be hacked so that someone can remotely disable the
   brakes, thanks to crappy wifi. [1]
   - Your smart refrigerator leaks your gmail credentials. [2]
   - Your lightbulbs expose you to drive-by packet sniffing. [3]
   - Your internet-enabled wine decanter requires you to use
   vendor-provided wine bottle cartridges [4]

There's a number of overlapping problems here

   - the "Compuserve of Things" issue [5], where every eager vendor is
   going to try to lock users out of competitors' products [6]
   - the expansion of this problem, which is that corporations will be
   tempted to use the power of embedded computing to maximize profit [7]
   - a more general "Internet of Sh*t" problem [8], where the security
   ramifications of network-enabling devices is not fully realized and exposes
   users to all kinds of horrors. (As someone aptly put it: open network ports
   are like mucous membranes -- important for certain functions, but you don't
   want more of them exposed than necessary.)

Now all of these problems can be solved, but I am not convinced that they
will, unless and until things get particularly nasty: specifically, the
commercial enterprises doing IoT stuff don't have a motive to make things
better until it starts actually costing them money.

What can libraries do about this? I don't know. Pushing for open standards
helps. Implementing open standards helps. Practicing good security in IoT
certainly helps. I do think that "Just because you can, it doesn't mean you
should" is not a bad starting point, especially if we model stepping
through the right risk analyses and security practices as we develop IoT in
libraries.

For now, I prefer to stick with Adama's Law: "If it can kill you, don't
connect it to the network."


[1] http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/
[2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/24/smart_fridge_security_fubar/
[3]
http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/07/crypto-weakness-in-smart-led-lightbulbs-exposes-wi-fi-passwords/
[4]
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/kuvee-smart-wine-bottle-screen-internet-indiegogo-a6958751.html
[5] http://www.windley.com/archives/2014/04/the_compuserve_of_things.shtml
[6] http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/philips-hue-bridge-firmware-update/
[7] http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/rinesi20150925
[8] https://twitter.com/internetofshit?lang=en

On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 8:29 AM, Andrew Anderson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> For those who were not previously aware of IoT, here’s a primer focused
> specifically on the library space:
>
>
> https://www.oclc.org/publications/nextspace/articles/issue24/librariesandtheinternetofthings.en.html
>
> IMHO this is still a very young concept, and not even fully imagined yet,
> so there is no reason to feel like you’ve missed the boat, when the ship
> hasn’t even reached the dock yet.
>
> --
> Andrew Anderson, President & CEO, Library and Information Resources
> Network, Inc.
> http://www.lirn.net/ | http://www.twitter.com/LIRNnotes |
> http://www.facebook.com/LIRNnotes
>
> On Mar 30, 2016, at 22:16, Lesli M <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > I feel compelled to pipe up about the comment "Very sad that a librarian
> didn't know what it was."
> >
> > Librarians come in all flavors and varieties. Until I worked in a
> medical library, I had no idea what a systematic review was. I had no idea
> there was a variety of librarian called "clinical librarian."
> >
> > Do you know the hot new interest for law libraries? Medical libraries?
> Science libraries?
> >
> > The IoT is a specific area of interest. Just like every other special
> interest out there.
> >
> > Is it really justified to expect all librarians of all flavors and
> varieties to know this very tech-ish thing called IoT?
> >
> > Lesli
>