IOT = Death of the Middle Men…

I remember my first experience with eBay many years ago, trying to sell a PDA I won at lucky draw. Buyer took up my offer and we arranged to meet near my office to do the exchange. That made me realized that the world is my oyster, that I can literally start my virtual shop at home and sell everything to anyone anywhere in the world.

IOT (Internet of Things) has steadily progressed and Uber/AirBnB has proven that anything type of transaction can be made more efficient, taking out the old ways of having many middlemen standing in between you and the manufacturer, marking up the price as the product moves up the food chain.

Nowadays, with the tip of your fingers, you can call up any information from your smartphone. We do not need to wait days for an answer or do research at the library. Instant gratification is the norm and social media has cultivated attention spans of only seconds.

I believe that this acceleration of productivity has not ended yet. With the introduction of driverless cars soon,  machines will start to replace humans. Hopefully, new jobs will be created then or we will be heading towards the picture painted by the movie Wall-e, where humans do nothing, eat and get fat while they let machines take over everything else. Is that a good thing?