Author Archives: kc147103

http://wileyinformationsystemsupdates.com/2012/12/11/explainer-what-is-the-internet-of-things/

http://us.cnn.com/2012/12/04/business/leweb-parallax-internet-things/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

Discussion Questions:

• By having more of our lives online, will our daily lives become more visible to outsiders on the Internet?

• How do we prevent outsiders from viewing and tracking even the smallest details of our lives?

Nowadays, almost every physical item is possible to link to the Internet. In the past, maybe we would just set the alarm clock to the time that we want to wake up next day, it was just that simple. The CNN news is telling us, it is possible to link the electronic clock to the Internet via the Wi-Fi network in our home. The manufacturer of certain brand of alarm clock created a website just for controlling the alarm clock, and we can register to that website, and we can input our schedule and set alert in our own account. The alarm clock will then automatically sync with the internet, the users of this alarm clock product do not need to worry, even they forgot to set the alarm clock before they went to bed. If the alarm clock detected there is a important event in our schedule, and if we have set an alert 30 mins before the event, the alarm clock will wake the user up 30 mins before the event, so the user will not miss the event. Indeed, almost everything in our daily life can be connected to the Internet now, even simple like alarm clock, but there is a question comes to my mind. How if there is a outsider hack into our private internet, and steal some information from us. People may think it is not too dangerous to let the outsiders to know when they will wake up in the morning, but the fact is that if the outsider knows the user’s schedule very well, they can just get into your home and steal your valuable things in your home. The more visible a person to outsiders is, the more risks that person is bearing. For example, if a person bought a smart door lock, which can be connected to the internet and controlled by smart phone through the internet; if a hacker hacked into that person’s smart phone, and the hacker can just simply control the user’s phone to open the door. It is always possible to be hacked, no matter how high the internet security is. So maybe we should concern if it is really a good idea to link everything in our daily to the Internet. Indeed, the information technology brought a lot of convenience to our daily life, we still need to beware of the online security and not too depend on the technology. For example, smart home users should always keep their network secured by regularly update and upgrade their anti-virus software. Although this is a very simple way to protect the Internet, it works as the anti-virus software companies will always update their database to prevent the latest version of the hacking programs.

I came from Hong Kong, which is one of the most internationalized cities in People’s Republic of China. Under One Country Two Systems, Hong Kong has its own government and political rights to protect the economy development. The Hong Kong currency pegged to the US currency, so if there is a US company lists in the Hong Kong stock market, they can take a lot of advantages from the Asian investors as when they are using the Hong Kong currency to trade during the transactions, they are bring benefits to the US currency rate at the same time. So the Internet and IT technology is very important to the economic development in Hong Kong. Tokyo is a very huge city, but their city has Wi-Fi network covered almost everywhere. The Japan government understood if every person can access to the Internet whenever they want, there is a huge amount of potential benefit to Japan as people in Tokyo has the second largest stock market in Asia. Hong Kong is a very small city, and the Hong Kong government understands that Tokyo is the best model as the possibility to have Wi-Fi covered everywhere in Hong Kong is even higher than Tokyo and the Hong Kong stock market has the largest turnover rate throughout all the other stock markets in the world. The internet networking is Hong Kong is now very well developed, there is mobile Wi-Fi network on every single bus, train, subway stations, convenience store, supermarket, school, university, fast food restaurant, etc.

Hong Kong was a British colony, and it is the largest melting pot of Chinese and Western cultures in Asia. Hong Kong has mixed of Chinese and Western traits in a culture of life. Along with the United Kingdom restored Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, general public is easier access to Western culture than any other Asia cities. Culture of Hong Kong and the Mainland China, the increasingly frequent exchange of trade, and culture exchanges between Hong Kong and the Mainland netizens are also gradually increasing. The Internet absorbed Western culture, and also learned China’s Internet culture, would then form a unique Hong Kong-style Internet culture. Meanwhile, due to the huge amount of international trade in Hong Kong, it is very important for the government and people to make the right business decisions, so people in Hong Kong have a necessity to receive all the instant news around the world. As early as in 1990, the Hong Kong Internet Service Provider (ISP) was already providing Internet access service, but the service was extremely expensive, only government and large commercial organizations could afford it. The wire constraints were very expensive and the Internet speed was very slow at that time, so the coverage was not high. Hong Kong’s Internet was failed to proliferate, it leaded to extremely slow culture development. In 1995, the Internet was growing popularity of a large extent due to lower price computers, as well as ISP Internet coverage to more areas. The development and progress of science and technology was doing very well in Hong Kong, so that the ISP could provide services to a diversified manner, and the network gradually began to integrate into public life. Since 1999, ISP began offering broadband services. The bandwidth had been greatly upgraded, so the Internet users use much shorter time to receive information from the Internet than in the past. Internet users were able to receive more diversified news. Therefore, different forms of economic activities began to appear, the Hong Kong Internet network became highly commercialized.