Industrial Interent – Book Review
Internet has had an enormous impact on all aspects of our lives – the way we communicate, access and distribute information, the way we shop, the way we work. The Internet Revolution has oftentimes been compared to the Industrial Revolution in terms of its impact on society and economics, and for the most part this is not an exaggeration. However, until recently there have been many industries and fields that have remained on the surface unaffected with the rise of the information revolution and the Internet. The way that most industrial machines are built and operated remained more or less the same as it was fifty or more years ago. However, the advent of ever cheaper sensors, network connections, and microcontrollers means that we are witnessing the beginning of the incorporation of the interconnected Internet technologies and paradigms in all aspects of the industrial world.
In “Industrial Internet” Jon Bruner covers some of the more prominent industries that are about to become revolutionized through the emerging “internet of things”: energy, medical, automotive, manufacturing, etc. The smart grid and granularity of the energy production are already the reality in some parts of the US and the world. Several US states have already allowed the use of autonomous cars. The maker revolution in manufacturing is all the rage these days, and we are seeing more and more mall-scale manufacturers creating amazing products that only a few years ago would have been impossible to pull off without the budgets and equipment available to the industry giants. Bruner is arguing that the principles that some of the principles that have propelled the rise of the original Internet businesses – modularity, open standards, widely available APIs that hide the complexities of underlying processes – are also at play in this new, industrial, internet.
This short book is well written and very informative. However, it does use a fair amount of technical jargon and if you are not entirely comfortable with technical reports in general you might feel at loss in some of the sections. Overall, though, the book is as accessible as you could have hoped for from this kind of publication.
About the Author
Bojan Tunguz
Bojan Tunguz was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which he and his family fled during the civil war for the neighboring Croatia. Over the past two decades he has studied, lived and worked in the United States. He is a theoretical physicist with degrees from Stanford and University of Illinois. Tunguz has taught physics at several prominent liberal arts colleges and has been writing about physics, science and technology for more than a decade. He also has a wide spectrum of interests, and reads and writes about current events, society, culture, religion and politics. Over the years he has reviewed many of the books that he has read, and posted his reviews on various online outlets. In 2011 he had become a top 10 reviewer on Amazon.com, where he continues to be very active. Aside from reading and writing, Tunguz enjoys traveling, digital photography, hiking, and fitness. He resides with his wife in Indiana. You can follow my review updates on the following pages as well: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tunguzreview Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tunguzreviews Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104312842297641697463/posts
You said, “…However, until recently there have been many industries and fields that have remained on the surface unaffected with the rise of the information revolution and the Internet.” And I would agree with you; I also am inclined to believe Science to be one of these “unaffected” fields. Oh, they report well enough (or do they?) of their findings, such as Higgs-Boson and of late the exalted capture of the elusive neutrino. But what if there was another direction to look?
I chose you, Mr. Tunguz, clicked on your name as a possible reviewer for Shadow of Light, PRECISELY because you are a theoretical physicist. There is information in Shadow that points in another direction.
Let me connect to your technological brain: What if a simple bodily function was the API to another dimension?–a dimension the Ancients knew well about. And what if orthodoxy, from its inception, hid this fact (fact to me), and even wrote into its base doctrines and codices the methodology of this higher form of consciousness (because that’s what it is) as anathema, for the sole purpose of keeping the masses spiritually subservient?
That’s a big “what if”, I know. At the same time, I believe all I’ve just stated to be true, not scientifically provable yet, to be sure; but every day we get a little closer.
As for Shadow of Light, some is true, some is fiction; but if only one line is fiction the entire work must be deemed fiction. Consider Shadow then as true fiction; that might be the best way to categorize it.
What really happened to me, I cannot say at this time–maybe never; but Shadow is the summation of my experience: the way I chose to put the story forth.
And I apologize for using this means to talk to you a tad more privately, but it seemed logical.
If you’d like to read Shadow of Light I will mail a review copy to you. Just say where.
Thank you for your time.
S M Rheinschild