“I started talking about the Machine Internet nearly 20 years ago, before it was even called “the Internet of Things.” Sensors and motes, tied to an analysis by wireless networks. Anything whose performance can be adjusted can now be monitored and controlled by a central intelligence. You can monitor the condition of parts and schedule maintenance before things break. This matters if the part is your heart, and its breaking could kill you.”
💬 Dana Blankenhorn
I’ll take that claim and raise you by a few years …
A group of us started talking about the topic in the mid 90s.
We had the obligatory startup … Flypaper … with a back end we called ‘The Megaserver’ - and without getting into the details - the system allowed us to render a website - ‘just in time’ - by assembling components out of a database. Our message at the time … the website only exists when somebody is visiting it.
It lead to some interesting developments and conversations.
I can still remember one scenario where we envisaged every car having its own website, assembled from thousands of components that each mapped to specific things and functions in the car … this is mid-90s… people didn’t get it.
And then came the DOT BOMB. And oblivion swooped in.
Still very proud of what ‘we’ built.
Definitely ahead of its time … I mean think about the tools we had in the mid-90s to build this thing!