At TechFestNW, Innovator Sce Pike Affirms the Potential of an "Internet of Things"

Yes, like the kind in the movie HER.

The technology that Pike envisions would cut out human effort in managing IOT technology by connecting devices and managing them behind the scenes. It would automatically learn patterns and automate tasks. It would adapt to disruptions in those patterns and work around them. What’s more, it would anticipate new habits or changes in patterns and program for them before they actually happen.

“If you could actually have an agent that works on your behalf and can report back to you on it’s insights and patterns and what’s it’s going to predict next,” Pike says,”that would be fascinating.”

Pike isn’t working on this technology herself. In her job at Citizen, she develops user experience strategies for companies like Intel, AT&T, Disney and Samsung. She joined the team in 2010 after the company, started in the basement woodshop of founder Drew Klonsky 14 years ago, acquired her last venture Quantum Mobility Solutions in 2010.

She’s also the president of a Portland company called IOTAS, a smart home technology company set to unveil the country’s first residential building that responds to IOT technology in November.

But  there are a few pressing roadblocks the tech industry must overcome before the AI reality is accomplished, Pike says. Namely: user value, privacy rights, and creating a standard language for technology to talk to each other, and actually accomplish IOT connections.

Currently, Pike says the technology industry focuses on creating new products instead of focusing on the value behind why that product was made.

“Everybody is building things because they can,” she says. “They’re not really thinking about why should the users care.”

She also emphasized the need to regulate online privacy across countries, and cited Europe’s newly created Right to Be Forgotten act as an example of bad policy, and as a hiccup in standardizing global outlook toward privacy boundaries.

“In this new future there is going to be a lot of information being exchanged real time on a transactional basis,” she said about the need to adapt policy to keep up with technology. “Right now, privacy is all the rage.”

Another major hurdle, Pike says, is consolidating technical languages into one voice, allowing technologies to connect with one another.  

“It’s a very very messy world right now in the Internet Of Things,” she says. “What is the next step? It’s really to get the things that we are building to say hello to each other. Right now, they don’t speak the same language.”

If we can solve those problems, Pike thinks IOT technology has the potential to surpass that prediction.