Will IoT go mainstream in 2016?

I believe 2016 won’t be the year that starts the mainstream adoption of IoT technologies in the enterprise. The market remains incredibly crowded and most enterprises still haven’t developed the necessary level of knowledge and awareness of enterprise IoT solutions to become adopters. However, we think that in 2016 IoT will establish itself as a foundational piece of the next generation of enterprise software solutions. Additionally, I think the market will experience a decent level of consolidation, and this will clearly identify front-runners from second places.

Before you get too excited, this is just a concept at this stage.

Chaotic Moon is pitching this idea for Tech Tats, a collection of biosensors sitting on your skin. The idea is less like laying a circuit board onto your hand, as the video above shows, and more like having a slightly more protrusive tattoo with a bunch of chips on it.

The company has not said when it plans to put the first generation of tech tats on the market. Currently, its tech tats must be applied by hand. First, the special ink is painted on the skin with a brush. Then the small hardware components are fixed onto the area; they are tiny enough to require tweezers for application. But Chaotic Moon anticipates the version it will sell to consumers would come in a package similar to a box of Band-Aids and be applied like a temporary tattoo—with just some pressure and a little water.

(via Chaotic Moon Studios - Tech Tats on Vimeo)

“Michael Brown, a research fellow at the University of Nottingham… [lead an] experiment focused on how increasing the availability of data about household members’ activity would impact their social dynamics[, each] participant wore a Fitbit motion sensor… Participants were quick to deduce how the technology was set up and how best to game the system… [The display was based in the home which also] meant that there was no ambiguity about who was in the house and when, which had implications for privacy and made for some uncomfortable interrelationships… For Brown, the most significant issue that the monitoring experiment introduced into all of the participating households was the removal of ambiguity that often smooths the wheels of relationships. ‘The big concern was that it removed the capacity for white lies. It removes socially useful ambiguity,’ says Brown.”