To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab
It&#x27;s very MIT.<p>It&#x27;s also an illustration of what went wrong with the &quot;internet of things&quot; concept. Sensors are easy today. Actuators are hard. Most &quot;IoT&quot; things can&#x27;t <i>do</i> much.<p>Try to buy a home power window. They exist. They&#x27;re an exotic luxury home item. Even controllable home HVAC dampers are rare. It makes good sense to have a system where windows, fans, dampers, heaters, and compressors are all coordinated to maximize comfort at minimum cost, automatically. Will NeXT sell you that? No. It takes too much installation.<p>You might see that at a well run convention hotel. They have to keep customers happy, yet many of their big rooms are empty much of the time. So they&#x27;ll have CO, CO2, temperature, humidity, and motion sensors tied to a control system that senses what the room needs for the current people load.<p>There&#x27;s real IoT, but it&#x27;s under commercial building automation.