... steel plants and refineries.
All seemingly unrelated things, including suburbs, fast food and drive-time talk radio.
Likewise, argues Mr Hardy, "today’s dominant industrial ecosystem is relentlessly acquiring and processing digital information".
Hardy continues: "Our twenty-first century ecosystem demands newer and better ways of collecting, shipping, and processing data in much the same way as cars needed better road building. It’s a trend that is spinning out its own unseen background businesses."
Proof - if any is needed - of the spread of this new ecosystem came today with the announcement by General Electric that it has created a “data lake” method of analysing sensor information from industrial machinery in places like railroads, airlines, hospitals and utilities.
Working with a company called Pivotal, GE said that in the last three months it has looked at information from 3.4 million miles of flights by twenty-four airlines using GE jet engines. This, GE claims, has enabled it to identify things like possible defects 2,000 times faster than previously possible.
However, according to William Ruh, vice president of GE Software: “We’re only one-tenth of the way there. In ten years, 17 billion pieces of equipment will have sensors.”
Meantime, billions of humans are already augmenting that number with their own packages of sensors, called smartphones, fitness bands and wearable computers. Almost all of that data will get uploaded someplace too.
Earlier this year, researchers at the University of California in San Diego announced a method of engineering fiber optic cable that could make digital networks run ten times faster.
This will enable more segments of the system to work near to the speed of light, without involving the “slow” processing of electronic semiconductors.
Read the original unabridged NYTimes.com article.