Speaking on Technology Today

Florin Pintillie was our guest speaker this week.

Florin began his presentation with some slides about technology and its advances.
Focusing on computing power and the amount of data we can store. No floppies anymore.
Being able to have video calls when only 20 years ago, this was not possible. Fast computers, more storage.
Information that is stored is called data, the table of Rotary Club members is a structured data component.

Florin told us about business intelligence and that while he was working at Toyota. he collected data and integrated it and produced a report that would be handed to executives on Monday morning. This report is used to find out many things, e.g.
Recalls happen because of this type of collection of data. This could be something like faulty spark plugs from a single supplier
Data collected from the consumer may also be called Unstructured Data and sometimes cannot be put into a table e.g. emails but combining the two was initiated by the NSA to discover information relating to what might become terrorism.

Dunn and Bradstreet, the credit agency focus on companies that might have been sued, they all have a rating. Was the CEO photographed where he/she shouldn’t be. Or they were charged with corruption somewhere, even in another country. Or on twitter, linkedin or other social media. This information is put together by Dunn and Bradstreet to produce credit ratings.

He then spoke about machine learning, predictive analytics and how computers can read contracts in 20 minutes instead of a human at a few hours.

Moving forward to the IOT or the Internet Of Things. This can be smart water meters, so that water consumption can be read online with no meter readers being used. Water leaks can be picked up as well. Certain household are marked if an elderly person lives in the house and if no water has been used. This can signal a type of alert that predicts that the person may be in trouble.
Another wonderful IOT is when a knee is replaced and the new knee has been Bluetooth Enabled which notifies the doctor that there is trembling in the knee or other problems and he will be able to fix the problem sooner than later.
Just looking at the positives that the internet has made possible is amazing. The solving of crimes through DNA stored in a database of a private website e.g. ancestry.com where a murderer was caught by the fact that some people requesting to learn more about their DNA enabling the police to follow the family tree through to a person who was connected with the person murdered.
The storage of this data solved the crime.

The sharing of data by everyone throughout the world is collected without their knowledge, if you type it into the internet, it will be stored.
With the loss of human jobs due to the internet that people might be repurposed such as teaching children or more staff in hospitals.
There were many facets of IOT discussed, too many to list.

Thanks Florin for the wonderful and informative talk