The buzz: Big Think (https://bigthink.com/words-of-wisdom/nikola-tesla-2) discovered a visionary quote by Nikola Tesla [1856–1943] in a 1926 interview with Collier’s magazine where he described the modern-day smartphone:

“When wireless is perfectly applied, the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”

Fast forward to today: The Internet of Things, aka ‘IoT’, has crossed over into mainstream commercial and business use. In honor of Tesla, we googled “IoT Trends 2021” and got ~75,700,000 results in 0.49 seconds.

What would Tesla say about how IoT now impacts data analytics, computing at the edge, remote work, remote health care, robotics, smart homes, life in cities, automation, smart retail, cybersecurity, industrial equipment monitoring, and customer experience?

We’ll ask Don DeLoach at Rocket Wagon Venture Studios, Tom Raftery at SAP, Dave Friedman at Ayla Networks, Rob Tiffany at Ericsson, and Ron Rock at Microshare, Inc. to unpack IoT in the News: Ripped from the Headlines – Part 2.