# S3 E3: Byte: The internet of lots of things

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2024-04-22
- **Format:** Video · 50 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Industry trends, AI & ML, Analytics
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/s3-e3-byte-the-internet-of-lots-of-things
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8LHMI0565g

In this Datum Podcast episode, Ravi and I explore the internet of things, from whether we've hit peak smartphone to the hardware-versus-software trade-offs in smart devices. We dig into 5G, latency and edge computing, the coming explosion of machine-generated data for analytics, and why fears about Facebook "listening" miss the real point about data privacy.

## Key takeaways

- Smartphone improvements are now marginal like cars, with software lagging behind hardware because developers can't fully optimise for one OS before the next arrives
- 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and edge computing tackle latency and power draw, which is what actually unlocks persistent connected devices and use cases like driverless cars
- Chips have to carry 2G through 5G simultaneously during the transition, which hurts battery life and dampens early impressions of new networks
- The next wave of data will be machine-generated rather than human-triggered, giving businesses far more granular event-level data for analysis
- Targeted ads come from behavioural patterns and shared signals like a common router MAC address, not from your phone secretly listening to you

## Chapters

- 0:00 Storm chat and aviation tidbit
- 2:04 Data ethics recap
- 2:51 Peak smartphone and hardware versus software
- 6:52 Connected home and common protocols
- 10:13 5G, latency and network infrastructure
- 18:28 Edge computing and power efficiency
- 23:41 Wearables and augmenting daily life
- 28:22 The coming explosion of machine data
- 30:02 Data privacy and the listening myth

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/s3-e3-byte-the-internet-of-lots-of-things

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena