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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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“The revolution in computing is the first to bring so many individuals and processes into the same medium of communication and to translate and track their actions into a single technological language. Cyberspace – a world coined, at that point as an essentially hypothetical concept, only in the 1980s – has colonized physical space and, at least in major urban centers, is beginning to merge with it. Communication across it, and between its exponentially proliferating nodes, is near instantaneous. As tasks that were primarily manual or paper based a generation ago – reading, shopping, education, friendship, industrial and scientific research, political campaigns, finance government record keeping, surveillance, military strategy – are filtered through the computing realm, human activity becomes increasingly “datafied” and part of a single “quantifiable, analyzable” system. This is all the more so as, with the number of devices connected to the Internet now roughly ten billion and projected to rise to fifty billion by 2020, an “Internet of Things” or an “Internet of Everything” looms. Innovators now forecast a world of ubiquitous computing, with miniature data-processing devices embedded in every objects – “smart door locks, toothbrushes, wristwatches, fitness trackers, smoke detectors, surveillance cameras, ovens, toys and robots – or floating through the air, surveying and shaping their environment in the form of “smart dust”. Each object is to be connected to the Internet and programmed to communicate with a central server or other networked devices. The revolution’s effects extend to every level of human organization.” Henry Kissinger, World Order (New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, 2014), 342-43.
As the above excerpt from Dr. Kissinger’s most recent book testifies, the “Internet of Things” (IoT) is now part of the global conversation on economy and society including its effect on prospects for international order. IoT is inherently transformational and cannot be overlooked, especially by an organization such as Georgia Tech, which is among the top engineering and technology research and education institutions in the world.
In addition, Georgia Tech is home to many distinguished researchers who have pioneered concepts and technologies at the root of what is now known as “the Internet of Things”. As a result, we are in the process of setting up a Center for the Development and Application of Internet of Things Technologies (CDAIT pronounced sedate) to establish Georgia Tech as a preeminent point of reference in the global IoT space. IoT whose value chain by all accounts is long and intricate provides a fertile ground for all kinds of investigation. Anchored at GTRI with a focus on real-world solutions and working in close liaison with the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT), CDAIT aims at bridging the nascent but rapidly growing IoT industry with the related multifaceted capabilities residing in various units at Georgia Tech.
CDAIT Managing Director Alain Louchez will briefly introduce IoT trends and challenges and address CDAIT’s objectives and activities.
Recent article by Alain Louchez The Invisible Edge of the Internet of Things
