Super skyscrapers, “eartherscrapers” and underwater cities predicted in a new Internet of Things report
The Internet of Things (IoT) could help us take space holidays, live underwater and printer food in the next 100 years.
According to a report commissioned by Samsung’s smart home SmartThings subsidiary, people will be living either in mega-tall buildings or “Earthscrapers”, huge structures that tunnel 25 storeys underground. Some of us could even get in the sea and live in underwater cities, using the water itself to create breathable atmospheres and generating hydrogen fuel through the process.
A world of the future report wouldn’t be complete without flying cars. It said that personal flying drones would replace cars of today and could be strong enough to carry entire homes around the world for holidays.
The report predicts that in the future, we will print out homes and furniture from locally recycled material. Not only that, but we will also be able to print out Michelin-starred meals in minutes.
Our homes, powered by the Internet of Things, will be filled with smart walls that change according to our moods. Home “medi-pods” will diagnose us when we are ill and supply medicine or a remote surgeon if needed.
Internet of Things changing lives
The SmartThings Future Living Report was authored by a team of leading academics including TV presenter and one of the UK’s leading space scientists, Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, award-winning futurist architects and lecturers at the University of Westminster Arthur Mamou-Mani and Toby Burgess, as well as pioneering urbanists Linda Aitken and Els Leclerq.
Space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who co-authored the report, said: “Our lives today are almost unrecognisable from those a century ago. The internet has revolutionised the way we communicate, learn and control our lives.
“Just 25 years ago, technology like SmartThings would have been inconceivable, yet today, developments like this let us monitor, control and secure our living spaces with the touch of a smartphone.
“Over the next century we will witness further seismic shifts in the way we live and interact with our surroundings – working on The SmartThings Future Living Report with a panel of industry experts, has allowed me to explore what these could be.
James Monighan, UK managing director of Samsung SmartThings, which commissioned the report, says: “The smart home revolution will have massively positive implications on how we live. Our homes are becoming smarter and can now detect the presence of things like people, pets, smoke, humidity, lighting, and moisture. And this is just the beginning.
“Just as the technology driving the Internet has spread to smartphones and smart homes, the smart home revolution is destined to spread to larger communities and countries. By simply turning lights and heating off when we don’t use them, we can reduce emissions.
“By being able to better monitor and secure our homes, we can reduce crime. By better monitoring the habits of aging relatives, we help them to achieve greater independence and a higher quality of life.”
The Internet of Things report was published to co-incide with the announcement that SmartThings will begin to work with hundreds of products from a wide range of brands, as well as working with all of Samsung’s TVs as well as refrigerators, washer machines, ovens, and robot vacuum cleaners.
Ron Lifton, senior enterprise solutions manager at Netscout, told Internet of Business that within the next few years, IoT and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will become very large and very complex IT infrastructures, supporting mission critical systems and billions of devices.
“Companies cannot afford mistakes that will impact communications, processes, productivity, or the security of workers. Having the right service assurance platform in place to quickly identify and trace the root cause of a performance problem will be essential to the success of IoT and IIoT,” he said.