The robots are coming
Grab your kids, your wife and as many valuables as you can fit in a small bag and run for the hills! The robots are coming, so you must run for your lives! Not quite, the truth is that the robots have been here now for quite some time and as per usual technological advances year on year just mean that these robots and automated processes are becoming more sophisticated and intelligent. However, it is fair to say that over recent years the advances have accelerated and we need only take video games as an example of how far technology has come on. The soccer games that I played on the original Nintendo were literally little pixelated block men and it is laughable now to think back on these games. Today's games will have scars, tattoos and all the little identifiable little things factored into players and they actually look real. Another example of how far technology has progressed is our smart phones. We take them for granted as they are relatively cheap, however a computer 30 or 40 years ago that would be capable of doing what your smartphone can do would literally take up a full room and cost millions to make.
This advancement in technology shows no signs of slowing down and I really wonder what society will look like in one hundred years time? I do worry a little bit about it actually, as we could be on a road towards a Metaverse where some people may actually check out of real world society and just live there lives through a digital version of themselves in a virtual or augmented reality dimension. It may sound far fetched now, but anyone who has used virtual reality recently will realise how immersive and realistic it actually is. For me this Metaverse and what it may do to people is far more worrying than automation and robotics, which to some degree I believe we should embrace. My team and I regularly automate labour intensive jobs at work on routers and switches, which frees up our time to think more about innovation, strategy and future business trends. Any business or young person who ignores automation or believes they don't need to know about it or flex towards it, may well be left behind depending on the industry you are in or plan to be in. For me though, there are very few industries that automation will not impact, so if you are young and tech savvy, go and learn Python, Ansible, Terraform and Javascript. Trust me, when I say it will pay off and will never need to worry about a job.
More and more devices
Have a look around your house. How many devices have you got that connect to the internet? In my house, off the top of my head there are around ten or fifteen, it sounds like a lot, but when you start rhyming them off, they add up pretty quickly. Two Work laptops, two personal laptops, two tablets, My smartphone, My wife's smartphone, two TV set top boxes, two Google Home devices, Fitbit monitors and more. That is a lot of IP enabled devices and the list will only grow more and more over time as the Internet of Things takes hold more and more and that's not to mention the potential of virtual reality and augmented reality. As my friend Bob Dylan once said "The times they are a changing". They certainly are Bob, they certainly are!
It is not just in our homes either where we are seeing more and more devices, more and more businesses are upgrading to more sophisticated point of sale systems or are using sensors or scanners that are IP addressable. Digital signage is another one which we see more and more of in Ireland these days, mainly on motorways to give the motorists messages, but slowly theses will replace legacy billboards around the country as cost reduces.
The Networks that we use everyday at work and at home are no different and the number of devices on these networks will outnumber the number of people on the internet by a ratio of ten to one by 2025. The recent pandemic that we all lived through helped to accelerate digital transformation and as such we quickly hit and moved past a ratio of five to one between devices and people.
It is just as well that Network engineers thought about the limitations of the IP addresses that were first used on the internet, which are basically 4 numbers separated by decimal points, for example one of gmails IP addresses for URL www.gmail.com is 172.253.116.19 as you can see below and you can find the same for any website title or URL by simply typing CMD into the box at the bottom left corner on a Windows machine which will bring up a command prompt. Now just type "nslookup www.gmail.com" and replace gmail with whatever address you are interested in and press enter
The issue with the address 172.253.116.19 which is an IPv4 address is that we are limited to 2 to the power 32 unique addresses, which seems like a lot if you are sitting in a lab back in the 1970s thinking about this, after all that is 4,294,967,296 unique addresses in theory, more than four billion, sure we'll never use all of them, of but we will and were it not for IPv6 , we would have already. You see IPv6 fixes the issue by giving us 2 to power of 128 unique addresses, which translates to 340 trillion trillion trillion IP addresses, so unless we start giving IP addresses to stars in the night sky, we should be OK for all eternity here on earth.
Embrace Automation
I have touched on it already above, but let me leave you with this piece of advise, embrace automation, do not fear it. Whether you are 9, 39 or 69, pick up a book, look up Wikipedia or find some other good online information sources and start understanding it. What is automation? What does it mean for the industry I am in? What does it mean for the industry I am planning to go into? How can I skill myself now so that I am ready for it?
Those are some questions to start asking yourself, as automation is not coming, it is already here and it will only grow further and further across many more industries, jobs and skillsets. Business owners, Governments and other institutions do not like to spend money needlessly and if there is a smarter, cheaper and easier way to do things, you better bet your bottom dollar or old money Irish pound that they are going to do it.
That is what automation basically facilitates. It allows businesses and governments to get more for less, but there is always an angle if you can see the writing on the wall and flex towards the jobs and rolls which will be necessary in the new digital world we find ourselves in. Automation is not going away, it will grow and grow as time goes by and the digital transformation accelerates.
Thanks as always for stopping by everyone.
Peace Out
