Kevin Garber: [00:01] This week on the "It's a Monkey Podcast."

Maciej Kranz: [00:04] Now, we're moving from what's happening now into the future. It's an interesting concept where you think about Internet of things. All of the elements are connecting, and becoming a foundation of a true revolution, because of artificial intelligence, because of the virtual augmented reality, because of the bio-engineering, when we are starting to grow our own bones.

[00:30] To your point, there is a lot of the futuristic fantasy, over the next 10 years, will start becoming a reality, because we will become more of cyborgs that we were before. Where it leads us, what makes human versus robot, what it means for somebody to live 160 years, probably more of a philosophical versus the technological conversation. [laughs]

[00:58] [background music]

Kevin: [00:58] Good morning! Good evening! Hello, wherever you are in the world. My name is Kevin Garber. I am the CEO of ManageFlitter. I'm also the co-host of "It's a Monkey" podcast. We are episode number 86 of the It's a Monkey podcast.

[01:19] Thank you so much for joining us. It is Wednesday, the 22nd of March, if you are watching us live on Periscope and a special hello to everyone who's watching us live on Periscope. It is Friday, the 24th of March, for anyone that is listening on the podcast or watching us on YouTube.

[01:38] We are now on YouTube as well, so you can subscribe on YouTube. Just search for It's a Monkey podcast and you'll head over to the right part of the YouTube channel where you can subscribe.

[01:51] Today, we have a great show coming up. I will be interviewing Maciej Kranz, who is the bestselling author of "Building the Internet of Things," a great book about the Internet of things, IoT. It's a word you might be stumbling across every now and then.

[02:06] We'll find out what does that actually mean and what that is all about. That's coming up later on in the show. As usual, we kick off with some tech news. Today, I've got my co-host with me as usual, Kate Frappell, and we've also got another guest in the studio, Jo Pinto, who's the business operations manager at ManageFlitter.

[02:27] She's going to be giving us some insight into one of the new stories. Let's kick it off first with Kate. Kate, what's happening in the news this weekend in the tech industry?

Kate Frappell: [02:37] A autonomous delivery robot by SpaceShip Technologies is going to be launching in Virginia.

Kevin: [02:45] So, this is in the US?

Kate: [02:48] Yes.

Kevin: [02:48] This isn't a drone. This is a little robot that wanders around on wheels, right?

Kate: [02:53] Yes. Six wheels, resembles a cooler. It's something you can put your drinks in.

Kevin: [02:57] We call those eskies in Australia...

Kate: [02:58] Yes, it's been branded.

Kevin: [03:00] But Americans call them coolers.

Kate: [03:03] Coolers, yes. They resemble a cooler, they can go within three kilometers in 15 to 30 minutes. They can take your groceries, parcels and even food as well.

Kevin: [03:16] Right and so they've made these legal or they've mandated that it's OK for these to be used. I saw that part of the requirement was that they had to follow all the street signs and so it stops at traffic lights, so it's not going to cause havoc.

Kate: [03:35] No, no. They're quite light as well and yeah, they have to abide by the law and they have censors that can go around obstacles. They also need to have a license plate or an ID, similar to a car.

Kevin: [03:51] Is that right?

Kate: [03:52] Yeah.

Kevin: [03:53] Slowly these robots are [laughs] taking shape and soon they'll be wondering around amongst us...

Kate: [04:01] Yeah and it's not the first one. So, Yelp and a food delivery service in the States, called Eat24, have also trialed one that's nowhere near as stylish and Dominos as well tried one in New Zealand. It could take ten pizzas and it also has a cooling section, so you can put your drinks in there.

Kevin: [04:19] These are robots not drones?

Kate: [04:21] Robots.

Kevin: [04:22] OK, interesting. You know, it's one thing that I think cities could really play their part in accelerating innovation would actually be to push forward with things like that.

[04:33] I mean, imagine if Sydney in the CBD, it's a relatively small area, and they should be trialing these things, experimenting, and encouraging some innovation and companies. There's always a lot of spinoff technologies from innovative activities.

[04:48] Who knows what it would land up doing? It's always disappointing that politicians at all levels of the game are a little bit half-asleep. We've got a city here, lots of people. There's technologies and technologists everywhere. Why aren't we doing this if techs available?

[05:04] Why aren't we trialing these things? Even certain precincts in certain areas, let's keep things moving forward.

Kate: [05:10] Well, there is a lot of associated dangers with them as well. Some people are concerned with terrorist activities, the security surveillance, and even just government monitoring. What can you attach to these robots?

Kevin: [05:24] You suddenly have someone following you [laughs] at night on your way...

Kate: [05:28] Yeah. I'd love to know how you can...For example, you see one of these Domino's ones going around, somebody wants a pizza, they're just going to hijack it.

[05:36] [laughter]

Kate: [05:36] Because you're going to know that there's a pizza...

Kevin: [05:42] Maybe you can have little water pistols, and if the wrong person comes too close with facial ID, it can actually just shoot the water pistols and defend the pizzas. [laughs]

Kate: [05:53] Maybe. I mean, apparently you have an auto code that you put in, in order to open it when it gets to your house, but what's to stop someone from just picking it up and taking it home?

Kevin: [06:02] But you see, that's why we've got to trial these things, because all these issues surface themselves only after you're working with them, right?

Kate: [06:10] Yeah, but it's costly as well.

Kevin: [06:13] Yeah. I think things like nursing and things like that could have huge applications. In Japan, I believe they've already got robots that comfort elderly people. Japan's got a massive problem with the aging population and it's a big issue that they got.

[06:28] There's a disparity in demographic sizes and they've got robots that comfort all the people and hopefully, soon we'll be able to deliver medicines to them so, the future is here. Interesting. Thanks for that Kate.

[06:42] Josephine Pinto, thank you for joining us in the podcast. You've featured in one of the previous podcasts talking about the Google Pixel. How's your Google Pixel going?

Josephine Pinto: [06:50] My Google Pixel is still going very well. Can't complain. I'm still waiting for the Note 8 but, you know, Google Pixel will do for now.

Kevin: [06:59] Tell us what's happening in the news this week.

Josephine: [07:02] Yeah. Google Maps have released a new version of...And added features to Google Maps.

Kevin: [07:11] We haven't spoken much about Google Apps on the show and it's actually interesting you brought that up, because it's probably one of the apps that people use the most, right?

Josephine: [07:19] Yeah, definitely.

Kevin: [07:20] It's Google Maps, so I think we should actually talk more about some of these little features. Tell us about this new feature that Google Apps has released.

Josephine: [07:28] The new feature that they have is, it can detect that you've parked your car and it'll ask you if you want to save that parking spot. You can add a picture, take some notes of where you've parked your car, and then you can also even put a time limit on it. If you're in a spot that has a time limit on it, it will do a countdown for you and send you notifications.

Kevin: [07:48] Now, here's an idea. What about having one of these little robots escort you to your car? Like one of the big Westfields, right? Wouldn't it be fantastic that it works out who you are and you get an escort back to your car?

[08:05] In the big Westfield, they have security there that, half of their day are escorting people back. People get lost. Very confusing car park here in one of the big Westfield shopping centers in Sydney.

Kate: [08:16] Yeah it's true, and I've even gotten lost as well. You have to go up and down the different levels and half-levels and...Yeah, it can be very confusing. The robot idea is actually a really good idea.

Kevin: [08:27] It's a good idea, right?

Kate: [08:29] Yeah.

Kevin: [08:29] It's good and you could even have it sponsored by a company and you can even have Domino's pizza and they'd throw in a slice of pizza while they're working.

[08:34] [laughter]

Kevin: [08:36] Google Maps, that's a great idea. It tags it on your map. You can put in a photo. You can put in some other notes. Anything that it offers special for multistory car parks?

Josephine: [08:49] No. There's nothing for that at the moment. It's literally just a marker on your map.

Kevin: [08:54] Right. Does it disappear automatically after time?

Josephine: [08:58] It does. One of the complaints is that if you're going on a business trip and you're leaving your car somewhere, in a long-term parking spot, if you go overseas and you've got your location on, it will actually just override that, so you can lose that information.

Kevin: [09:15] Right, so they should probably put some option if you want to save it, because you don't want to clutter it up with...You probably want to keep it for a day unless it's a long-term thing.

[09:26] You're an organizer. You're a great person optimizing efficiency. Any other tips for Google Maps that you think would be useful to someone listening to this, that might not be well known?

Josephine: [09:38] Yeah, definitely. I actually just discovered this very recently. I can't believe that I hadn't discovered it earlier, but you can actually now save your favorite places and places you want to go in the future.

[09:53] You used to only be able to save your home and your workplace and that was it and you can also star places as well. I guess that's favorites.

Kevin: [10:04] Some people don't know about the feature called...I think it's called pinning, which you can share a pin as you can share a location with someone, right?

Josephine: [10:12] Yeah, that's right. You can even pinpoint a whole bunch of different places on a map and send that particular map to a person.

Kevin: [10:19] A lot of people don't actually realize this. I sent it to a friend the other day and they said, "Look, wow it's amazing. You just clicked on it, took him to the Google Maps." I have never really received that. Once from James, probably at your wedding funnily enough...

Josephine: [10:34] [laughs]

Kevin: [10:34] Where it was a tricky location and he sent me a Google Maps pin, but besides that I've never actually received something. It's a very easy way to share a location.

Josephine: [10:44] Yeah. They are working on all that sharing functionality at the moment. Once you got your car spot marked, you can share that now. They're really making it easy to share that information around.

Kevin: [11:01] There used to be an app called Google Latitude. I think it was called Latitude. Do you ever remember where you could switch it on and people could follow where you are?

Josephine: [11:10] Yeah. I vaguely remember that.

Kevin: [11:13] It had a little bit of traction on especially married couples they would like to...

[11:19] [laughter]

Kevin: [11:19] For almost half novelty effect, see where their partners were during the day, but it never really took off. I wonder if it still exists.

Josephine: [11:29] It would be interesting if it does. While you're looking for that, I also discovered that with Google Maps...I don't know, they're doing some funky stuff. You know the movie "Kong -- Skull Island" which recently came out?

Kevin: [11:45] No. [laughs]

Josephine: [11:47] Kong -- Skull Island, they actually created a place on a map of an island that obviously does not exist, a fake island, and they invited people to write reviews about this island. It was an advertisement for that movie [laughs] which is really different.

Kevin: [12:05] Interesting.

Josephine: [12:05] Yeah.

Kevin: [12:08] I'm just reading about Google Latitude. Google shut down Google Latitude in 2013, so that actually hasn't been around for a while. It's actually interesting that an equivalent app has...I know there's all the privacy concerns, but there is a use case when people...

[12:25] Families have these WhatsApp groups. You can almost picture these people wanting to...Say people go on holiday to Japan together. There's 10 of them to be able to look at a map and just see where everyone is at all time. It's interesting that an app hasn't emerged for these use cases.

Josephine: [12:45] No. They'll be very useful though. Very, very useful.

Kevin: [12:49] Josephine Pinto, Business Operations Manager at ManageFlitter. It's nice to have you on the show. Maybe we'll drag you in a little bit more to help us out with the podcast.

[13:01] We're going to take a short break, and after that, we're going to be chatting to Maciej Kranz who is the author of a book on Internet of Things and will be talking about IoT, Internet of Things. Stick with us and we'll be back after the short break.

[13:19] [commercial break]

Kevin: [13:19] You're back with It's a Monkey Podcast. We talk about everything relating to technology, entrepreneurships, startups. Every now and then, we like to zoom out onto bigger picture industry trends and issues.

[13:50] One aspect we haven't actually chatted about is the Internet of Things, also known as IoT. I'm happy to say I found an expert on the topic in Silicon Valley, Maciej Kranz, who's the author of the book "Building the Internet of Things." He's also the Vice President Corporate Strategic Innovation Group at Cisco Systems. Maciej, thanks so much for joining us in the podcast.

Maciej: [14:16] Thank you so much, Kevin. Great to be here.

Kevin: [14:18] Let's just take one step back. It's one of these buzz words that a lot of people hear about, Internet of Things, IoT. It's a word that I believe actually has been thrown around for quite a long time. I believe since the mid-90s or mid-80s. Is that right?

Maciej: [14:32] That's correct. The term was originally inclined in the '90s to talk about the RFID networks. To be honest, six or seven years ago, when we were deciding on how to call this phenomenon of everything being connected to everything, we just decided to adopt this term and expand its scope instead of inventing the new term.

Kevin: [14:56] RFID, of course that is radio trip tags that have had a lot of promise, that they'll revolutionize retailing and things like that, which hasn't quite executed yet. Has it?

Maciej: [15:06] Correct. At the same time, when you look at Internet of Things, it actually is real and that's probably one of the differences here. RFID was sort of ahead of its time. We're starting to see some great adoptions of the third and fourth generation of RFID types and technologies. I like RFID. With IoT, it's been a great journey because we've highly successes and those are building on top of those.

Kevin: [15:37] Let's take a step back. Just paint a picture of a definition so to speak, a working definition of what IoT is.

Maciej: [15:47] Yes. It's actually a great way to start because there's a lot of different misconceptions about IoT. Effectively in a nutshell, IoT is about every device, everything getting connected to everything, to each other, to the networks, to the Internet sometimes. The device is like cars, and robots, and vending machines, and buildings. Even trash cans are getting connected.

[16:14] Unlike the first wave of Internet, the first 30 years of commercial Internet, where the main role of the connected devices was to give you and I the ability to communicate like we're doing now, communicating with each other, getting access to online processes, the main role of the Internet of Things devices is to generate the data. Then we take this data to create the business servers.

Kevin: [16:43] Interesting. Give us an example perhaps even a consumer-type example where this is in play. Perhaps the new motorcars that they connected and probably generating a massive amounts of data as you're driving. Most of it's probably not that useful, but every now and then an actionable piece of data surfaces, right?

Maciej: [17:04] You're absolutely right. Before I dive into the vehicle example, one of the misconceptions about Internet of Things is that it is primarily happening in a consumer space, [indecipherable] and so forth. I was at the Consumer Electronics Show a couple of weeks ago, and we saw all these connected fridges, and connected toasters, and so forth.

[17:30] While this feature is useful for these home appliances, the reality is that the business use cases for why we should be interconnecting classes of devices in the home are just starting to emerge, like let's say elderly care or home security.

[17:49] Most of the applications that we see in Internet of Things today are actually happening on the business side. Connecting vehicles is one example that may be troubling to the world.

[18:08] Over the next two years, pretty much every new car will be connected. On average, a single connected car generates two petabytes of data every year. It's huge, right? From that perspective, because all the sensors, all the subsystems, they're all generating data.

[18:29] When you think about an application like preventive maintenance, which is quite popular in transportation logistics in mining -- I think in Australia, for example, in open pit mines -- when you would anticipate potential failures of components in the vehicle, let's say, three months in advance so you have time to fix it before it breaks down.

[18:50] In this scenario the benefit is tremendous, right? Especially in the open pit mine when every day, the holding truck is out of commission, it costs the company up to $2 million.

[19:06] The interesting part here is that in order to implement such a system, we had to develop a new architecture. Traditionally, when you think about, let's say, cloud computing, the first generation of cloud computing architectures were focused on batch processing.

[19:21] Let's say you have 30 years of seismic data and you process that information, or you connect a bunch of vending machines to the cloud directly because you sent only a few packets every couple of days saying, "Hey, please come over because I'm running out of cans," right?

[19:37] In this kind of data intensive scenario that connect a vehicle, we actually talk about what we call a fog computing, [indecipherable] cloud architecture, where you process a lot of data in the vehicle itself and only send exceptions.

[19:51] For example, "An element in the engine's breaking. Please fix it," or "Here is the latest insurance data," or "Here is the software update as required." You basically get only the essential alerts back to the cloud through the wireless network and process the majority of data coming out of sensors locally in the vehicle itself.

Kevin: [20:18] Now, where I see this is being hugely useful in "preventative maintenance" is the human body, right?

[20:25] It would be revolutionary if we could sensor up on the inside and we get these exceptions and say, if you carry on this way...There is no issue now, but according to all the models, you are going to have an issue if you don't start sleeping more or don't start eating more greens. That would be absolutely revolutionary.

Maciej: [20:48] Now we're moving from what's happening now into the future, but it's an interesting concept where you think about infinite of things. All of the elements connecting and becoming a foundation of a true revolution because of artificial intelligence, because of the virtual or augmented reality, because of the bioengineering when we are starting to grown our own bones.

[21:18] To your point, there's a lot of the futuristic fantasy over the next 10 years will start becoming a reality because we will become more of cyborgs than we were before. Where it leads us, what makes human a human versus robot, what it means for somebody to live 160 years, probably more of a philosophical versus a technology conversation. [laughs]

Kevin: [21:46] That's going to be the hot aspect, in a way, but it's already halfway there. A couple of years ago I bumped into a chap that was relatively young. He was in his 40s. He had a congenital heart condition and he had a pacemaker of sorts. He said to me that his cardiologist can track exactly what's happening in his office.

[22:08] I'm not quite sure what. I think it connected somehow to his phone, or the mobile network, or it had a sim card. I can't remember exactly, but that's an example, right?

Maciej: [22:19] It absolutely is. If you look at the applications, you mentioned monitoring of pacemakers, of devices. There's increasing use of application, for example again, elderly care where you would monitor the vital signs and conditions in an elderly home, but also in people's homes.

[22:43] If for example, somebody suddenly falls down or if their heart rate drops, you get this information sent to the appropriate folks. This is just a starting point. The beauty of IOT is that we're seeing a fairly broad sort of adoption across multiple industries.

[23:02] We've talked about healthcare. You see adoption in agriculture with precision farming, with irrigations and even managing a complete tomato farm or winery to manufacturing applications with connecting processes across manufacturing floor.

[23:23] For example, Harley Davidson implemented this kind of a system. As a result, they were able to reduce the time it takes you and I to order a custom bike, the time we actually get the bike, from 18 months to 2 weeks.

[23:38] You see the adoption of IoT in mining as I mentioned, and in transportation like we discussed. Smart cities. I mentioned garbage collection becoming a big use case in additional parking and outdoor lighting. Retail, as well.

[23:56] I think that's the beauty of it. IoT is multiple markets and is such a complex market, but IoT adoption, what we've seen over the last couple of years, has been fairly broad.

Kevin: [24:06] I love the concept of the connected city. It makes so much sense, even from a transportation point of view. It just takes smart cars. The difficulty of humans, they're very good with, maybe, gray areas and judgements, but they're very bad at large amounts of data, whereas, computers are very good at it.

[24:23] Every single car in a city can know exactly where every other car is in the city and optimize for it. That can, again, revolutionize transport not only from a congestion point of view, but from a safety point of view as well.

Maciej: [24:38] You're absolutely right. I think the challenge connected with Smart City has been not lack of ideas like what you mentioned and the clear benefits you mentioned, but how do we manage and make it work from the business perspective?

[24:53] We've sort of went through the 10-year crossing the desert period, from vision and beautiful slides to "How do we actually make it work?" and "Who pays for this?" I'm happy to say that I believe there are some great examples in Australia, as well.

[25:14] At Cisco, for example, we work with over 100 different cities, but a key to the success was identifying the initial applications that would drive the deployment of the city wide infrastructure.

Kevin: [25:27] Give us an example of one city that's doing something interesting in this area.

Maciej: [25:32] Barcelona has been probably the longest standing lab for us. In their case, yes, they've had a broad vision, which was let's make our city a Smart City to make it more useful for people in terms of transportation, in terms of services, but also make it more friendly for businesses.

[25:58] They started with smart parking. The benefit is obvious for us, the consumer, but it worked from them from the business prospective also, because by installing this smart parking infrastructure, they were able to increase the utilization of the parking spots.

[26:19] They were able to vary pricing, and thus make more money, and also reduce the cost of managing the parking infrastructure. As a result, by implementing the system, which obviously is very beneficial for us as consumers, but they saw a 20 percent decrease in the cost of operating the parking infrastructure in the city and 30 percent increase in revenues.

[26:41] We've been looking for this use case in applications where it makes financial sense for the city, or for the private public partnership that will allow us to start the city on the journey.

[26:55] Once you've done it, you can add lighting. You can add physical security. You can get smart transportation systems. You can get into sporting events, and so forth. The sky is the limit, but it's been a tough thing to start with the first step.

Kevin: [27:13] Parking is just such an obvious first step because it's actually a static resource. It's not actually moving. There's a lot of predictability around it.

[27:22] We've got apps for cars like Uber. It makes total sense that with a bit of thought, you can have an app. When you're looking for a parking space in a certain area, it allocates you one. It takes it off the market and anyone else looking for the next 10 minutes until it's filled. In the scheme of things, it's relatively simple.

[27:39] It's crazy that in some cities in Australia, I stand to be corrected, but I think in Melbourne or maybe even in parts of Sydney, A, you've got to drive around and hunt for a parking space, B, you have to put in coins into a meter. Then when the meter runs out, you've got to run down and put more coins in.

[28:04] One of the purposes, I believe, of political leadership is to lubricate the wheels of technology and bring it down into cities, states, and the countries. They should really be doing that. The value, it's not just a convenience thing.

[28:22] As you mentioned, it's less pollution because cars are driving around less. It's less accidents, because there's less cars on the road, congestion, etc. The flowing effects are actually very tangible and important.

Maciej: [28:36] You're absolutely right. If you think about the whole concept of connectivity, when you think about...I don't know if you drive to work, but I do. My days usually starts with I get up, I jump in the car, and I get stuck in a traffic jam.

[28:52] The most frustrating piece is getting stuck on the red light when there's no cross traffic going through. Hopefully, you don't get into an accident. Then you spend time looking for parking. That is our daily routine.

[29:03] It's fascinating. We actually calculated on the global basis that actually, if I remember correctly, as a society we waste around five billion hours or equivalent of two percent of global GDP we waste getting stuck in traffic jams, looking for parking, and so forth.

[29:24] When you think about it, connectivity of the vehicle actually solves a lot of these things. We mentioned parking, but also we've been working on a system for vehicles to connect to vehicles, but also vehicles connecting to the infrastructure.

[29:36] Now the intelligent intersection can sense, "OK, there is 20 cars coming in one direction, two cars coming in opposite direction. Maybe I will let these 20 cars go through. I will pass this information to the next intersection because that [indecipherable] wave. You can start dynamically managing the infrastructure.

Kevin: [29:52] For computers, this is almost trivial tasks.

Maciej: [29:55] Exactly, but it's also interesting because when we get into this conversation further, you would start looking more and more into autonomous vehicles where you could argue the opposite will be happening. Which is we will not need a lot of parking spots no more because we will have a fleet of autonomous vehicles that will do the driving us around, right?

Kevin: [30:11] We can turn them all into bike lanes, right?

Maciej: [30:14] Hopefully. [laughs] Exactly.

[30:16] [laughter]

Maciej: [30:16] Or walking places or flying drones or whatever we want to do. [laughs]

Kevin: [30:21] Maciej, a couple of other questions. The one thing that I'm sure a lot of people listening to the show would be very interested in, security. I'm sure you get asked this a lot. Everything's connected to everything, which means that if someone gets in, they can do all sorts of damage.

[30:37] In case of cars and even agriculture, serious damage. If they up the fertilizer, that's potentially toxic and they can impact the food, etc. Is this baked into some of the protocols in these platforms? What's the industries take on the security side of things?

Maciej: [31:00] It's probably the number one question I get, not only from the consumers but also from the businesses. It's a big concern.

[31:09] If I look at the recent denial-of-service attacks for example, they actually served as a good wakeup call for the English. I don't know if you remember 15 years ago or so when we introduced WiFi systems. We had similar problems.

[31:25] Sort of a non-enterprise grade WiFi clients being attached to MRI machines and people hacking into that. It's the same thing that we're seeing now. If you think about denial-of-service attacks, basically the hackers were taking advantage of default names and passwords on some consumer cameras in the attack.

[31:46] We as an industry have solved this problem a long time ago. A lot of this is about the industry and the vendors working together on interoperability, best practices. There's a Verizon study that says 70 percent of security instances come from exploiting known vulnerabilities, meaning things that we know are potentially broken and we know how to fix them.

Kevin: [32:13] The equivalent of if you leave your car door unlocked the whole time, you're going to get broken into because it's open, but if you lock it...

Maciej: [32:21] You're asking for trouble.

Kevin: [32:22] Exactly. It's hardly going to happen.

Maciej: [32:26] I've seen vendors really starting to work together much more. I am starting to see vendors, both on the consumer side and on the enterprise side, investing more in IoT security, but I think it's fair to say that my sense is IOT security is everybody's job.

[32:44] Yes, it's vendors and they're getting their act together and doing more than they used to, but it's also businesses. For example, even five or six years ago, when I talked to car manufacturers, many of them would say, "You know, the way we secure our plants is basically security by obscurity. I'm not connecting my plant to the outside world."

[33:06] Which was a very naïve because then we had a [indecipherable] malware actually happening on these networks, I think, five years ago. They discovered virtual private networks connecting their contractors and their suppliers on manufacturing floors.

[33:27] Now the businesses are moving to much more comprehensive security architectures. They're looking at before, how do I prevent people from hacking into my system, during, how quickly I discovered I got hacked and what data was hacked, and after, how do I deal with this problem.

[33:39] It's also us as consumers. If we connect the camera, let's check there for obvious things, like is there a default name and password? Hopefully, in a year or two, there will not be that problem anymore, but for now, we do have it so let's check on these things.

[33:56] It's also as employees integrating a common security approaches to everything that we do. For example, somebody is tailgating you, is trying to enter your data center. OK, let's not do that. Let's remember half of the cyber actually are initiated within the enterprises.

[34:16] That's why I believe it's everybody's responsibility. Yes, we're making progress, but everybody whether we are wearing a consumer hat, an employee hat, or a business hat, or a vendor hat, we have a role to play.

Kevin: [34:29] There's a saying in business that most bullets are self-inflicted. I think in the tech industry, that's very much an issue.

[34:39] Maciej, Blockchain. Now Blockchain in a very interesting technology. It's a distributed system of trust that a lot of people say is going to revolutionize a lot of aspects of our world including banking, smart contracts, and things like that. How did Blockchain technology dove tail with IoT? Any real world examples that you can share with us?

Maciej: [35:04] Yeah, I'm actually a big believer in Blockchain, but probably more of private Blockchains than public Blockchains. I think we are, like with IOT, probably two or three years ago when it was on top of the high curve, we are sort of at the same stage with block chain. When I asked them in conversations whatever question is asked, block chain is the answer.

[35:23] [laughter]

Maciej: [35:23] The reality is there are lots of applications in the IOT space. From supply chain, how do we trace the components? For example, a couple of years ago we had floods in Malaysia. Now it's triggered a shortage of supply of hard drives, right, because some components in Malaysia the five layers into the supply chain were impacted.

[35:50] We can now look at the supply chain holistically. We can trace. I'm sure you've heard the examples of blood diamonds, how we can now trace the source of diamonds, but we can also trace the source of food.

[36:04] If there is a Salmonella outbreak, we can know exactly where it came from. We can trace pharmaceuticals and making sure that we're getting the right pharmaceuticals from the right sources.

Kevin: [36:21] You're saying with the Blockchain, you can track details of the value chain a lot more accurately?

Maciej: [36:29] Correct, yeah. I mean, in general, I believe block chain is one of these transformational technologies like IOT and it's converting from Internet into the ability of actually transact value, as you mentioned.

[36:46] The combination of IOT and Blockchain gives us the ability to have complete visibility and trust in to where our food, our medications, our products are coming from and managing all of this experience from recalls to a source of identifying the right sources of where the goods are coming from, and so forth.

[37:14] I think the combination will be very powerful, but it's also fairly early. If I look at Blockchain overall, of course, most of the focus has been on financial services. That's probably another conversation of what's real, what's not there.

[37:28] I would say this year, we will see some of the production implementations of Blockchain, but for a majority of use cases, we'll still be at the proof of concept.

Kevin: [37:41] I'm very into nutrition, food, and the impact on health. One of the issues is certification of organic food and biodynamic food. The industry obviously has a certification program, but you're never quite sure the temptation, I would imagine, for unscrupulous suppliers to just claim certification.

[38:03] The upside's very big and the downside of getting caught...It's very difficult for them to get caught. That's a real world example of how people would like genuine certification. You really do and you're happy to pay a little bit more for a high-quality, organically grown product. That would be a terrific problem to solve if that can be guaranteed that that trust is there.

Maciej: [38:28] This is a great example. I'm sure in Australia, you've had the same movement and started buying local, and making sure that this lettuce that you're actually is local, right?

[38:38] There's lots and lots of examples where again, a combination of every device being connected, everything being connected, with the power of Blockchain where you have immutability and that traceability of goods as well as transactions. Actually will create some, probably a lot, of examples that you and I can't think of right now.

Kevin: [39:01] That's an exciting part and interesting. I know Cisco have some labs in Eveleigh Carriageworks in Sydney and there's actually a local farmers market in that exact space every Saturday morning in Sydney. [laughs] That's an interesting connection.

[39:18] Maciej, you are Vice President of the Corporate Strategic Innovation Group at Cisco. What does that actually mean? What does your day to day actually entail?

Maciej: [39:31] I probably have one of the coolest jobs at Cisco. Basically, my team does three things. One is we incubate new business and we look at a lot of things. A couple of years ago, I was running the IOT business unit, which is why I wrote the book. It continues to be my passion. But we look at things like block chains, artificial intelligence, and other things.

[39:53] Second one is we focus on co-innovating with our customers and partners, which is why we actually have an innovation center in Sydney. We have one also in Perth where we work with our customers and partners. In Sydney, for example, the main focus is on agriculture. In Perth, obviously, it's on transportation and resources.

[40:13] We work with research institutions. We work with farmers, for example. We work with lots of our partners in this case in Australia, but also around the globe, to develop these solutions that take advantage of IOT, of Blockchain, of real time analytics to improve the business.

[40:36] The last part of the job is internal innovation. Making sure that if there's a great idea coming from, let's say a sales person in Sydney, that we can actually help him or her make it happen.

Kevin: [40:51] That's a fantastic job really. I am sure you're the envy of many people. Maciej Kranz is the author of Building the Internet of Things, a fantastic book, if you're interested in the today and the tomorrow of the Internet of things. It's a New York Times best seller. It's published by Wiley.

[41:07] I got the Amazon Kindle version, which I like reading especially my business books for some reason on Kindle. It's weird, they separate them. Books I read for pleasure I tend to enjoy the hardcopy, but the business ones I tend to enjoy on Kindle. It's available on Kindle.

[41:25] Maciej's also Vice President of Corporate Strategic Innovation Group at Cisco Systems. We'll put all the links up on the show notes.

[41:35] Maciej, I really appreciate your time. Very interesting. No doubt it's an exciting future ahead for us in the industry.

Maciej: [41:42] Thank you so much, Kevin. I really appreciate that. It was a great chat. I look forward to charting the future together.

Kevin: [42:19] Absolutely.

[42:20] [commercial break]

Kevin: [42:21] What's so amazing about The Internet of Things, the volume of data that Maciej spoke about, the amount of data that your car is going to generate is really quite remarkable.

[42:44] I guess, as he mentioned, the real challenge of this industry is actually wrangling the starter and getting interesting bits and pieces out of it. We'll probably be able to surface all sorts of things. You remember Jawbone, the fitness tracker, came out?

Kevin: [42:59] People used to sleep with the Jawbone, as well, because it could track your sleep patterns. Jawbone had access to everyone's sleep patterns. I remember they published some research around people's sleep patterns.

[43:20] I think there was an earthquake in San Francisco and they published the sleep patterns around that. I think it was about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. They published the sleep patterns of how people woke up and then how they went back to sleep. Obviously, they didn't surface individual's information. It was all an aggregate so the privacy was all OK.

[43:45] It was really fascinating to see how you can observe a population in that way. The Internet of Things, that's going to be one of the flow on effects just to see this population of data being able to be analyzed and what it will surface out of that data.

Kate: [44:05] I always found the sleep tracking a little bit creepy, but yeah, I mean, the information that comes out of this data is invaluable.

[44:16] I guess the most interesting part for me, especially from this interview, was autonomous driving. There's a famous sort of theory, I guess, called the trolley problem. It basically says if you had to choose between a group of five adults and one three-year-old, who do you choose?

Kevin: [44:35] I think with humans when they're faced with that in a split second, they don't have time to think about that, but if you're sitting around a table and designing an algorithm...

Kate: [44:45] You're responsible.

Kevin: [44:47] Yeah. Very tricky. Again, our industry is saying we're not talking about these issues enough. We're not talking about the ethical, moral, legal implications of AI, machine learning, Internet of Things. We need to start talking about these issues.

Kate: [45:02] Do you give the power to the individual driver to make that a setting when they buy their car? Or do you give that to the manufacturer? Or is it a government thing?

Kevin: [45:11] I personally think it should be government mandated, based with the consultation with the industry that there's an approach to it. There's an approach that levels the playing field. If you leave it up to the manufacturer, word will get out that manufacturer X prioritizes you, and it could get messy.

[45:38] I'm a believer in the relative size of government. There's all these debates between small government, big government, but one of the roles of government is to level the playing field. It should level the playing field around all of this. That's why we should debate and chat about these issues.

[45:55] A couple of podcasts ago, we chatted with Anil Dash. It was a fantastic episode. You can go back and listen if you haven't listened to it, but one of things he mentioned is that most of the elected officials in Washington are very technologically illiterate. Not even sophisticated. They're illiterate. Very concerning when this wave is about...

Kate: [46:17] About to start.

Kevin: [46:18] To start and going to have all sorts of disruptive effects. Anyway, that's episode 86 of It's a Money podcast. Follow us on Twitter or follow us on Facebook.

[46:31] You can email us podcast@itsamonkey.com. If you'd like to be interviewed, we're always looking for interesting people to interviewer. Or if you just want to say hi, and keep an eye out on Periscope. We do try to keep the times approximate on Wednesday evening, American time. We will try to keep on periscoping. Otherwise, thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

Kate: [46:55] See you later.

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