IoT: Understanding the Impacts of IoT in Our World.

     The Internet of Things (IoT) offers humanity with many benefits. It transformed our everyday life. It also helped us do our daily work and offered us with great convenience and productivity. IoT enables seamless communication and interconnectivity between numerous devices, enhancing real-time data collection, storage, and analysis that improves our quality of life. IoT technologies offers sustainable energy and environment, enabled smart city, provides E-health, and offers enhanced transportation and offers low-carbon products. 

     IoT offers sustainable energy and environment. It offers Energy Digitalization, which refers to the combining of IoT technologies with the energy industry in order to enhance energy efficiency and sustainability. This leads to the introduction of smart grids, which is an electricity network that uses technologies to efficiently manage and monitor the flow, consumption, and distribution of electricity across the city in real-time. Through this, energy wastes are reduced. It also makes way to the integration of solar sources that does not produce a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, reducing carbon footprint in our environment. 

     IoT develops smart cities. It transforms our city into a more efficient and automatic environment. It enables mart homes that leads to security enhancement through smart appliances like CCTV cameras, improved living convenience through smart monitoring systems that adjusts room temperatures, smart refrigerators and other smart appliances like smart TV for entertainment. It also improves urban mobility. It offers solution to traffic congestion through the development of Smart traffic lights and smart traffic monitoring systems.

     It helps the medical industry in patient care and health monitoring. It provides hospitals with smart technologies like wearable monitoring gadgets to track a patient's health, enhanced diagnostic devices that provides real-time data of patients and also accurate diagnosis.

     lastly, IoT also improve transportation within the community and offers Low-carbon products. It enables smart parking that helps reduce traffic congestion by helping drivers find a parking spot. It also helps drivers plan their route through devices and applications like Maps.

     Through these functionalities of IoT, residents' living conditions within a community greatly improved and safe from accidents. However, although IoT offers us a lot of benefits, the risks and issues also arise. Some of the issues and challenges associated with IoT are the security and privacy concerns, accumulation of e-wastes, and reduced necessity for labor.

     IoT technologies and devices collects and stores a vast amount of our personal information. It also shares our data with other platforms and our devices because of its interconnectivity feature. Because of these functionalities, there is a risk that our all of our personal data can be hacked and misused, especially when the IoT device has a weak security and privacy features. When an IoT device has weak security, it will be prone to malwares and cyberattacks, which other devices connected to this weak device can also be affected.

     As IoT devices are now obtainable by a lot of the population, the demands for IoT device production have now increased. Production and operation of IoT devices utilizes raw materials like fossil fuels and specific metals. These materials are already limited resources, and the increased production of these devices will be a problem in the future. Additionally, these electronics will be harmful for our environment if not properly disposed. This is due to the LED contents coming from the metals and plastic used to produce them and also the harmful chemicals. These wastes are known as E-wastes.

     The increase of IoT technology usage can result to over reliance. This will result to the reduction of human labor and personal interactions. Because of this, a lot of citizens will not have a job and cause social inequality. Overdependence to electronics and devices can also result to the decline of skills over time.

     In conclusion, IoT technology offers a lot of benefits to us and enhances our quality of life. It offers sustainable energy and environment, enabled smart city, provides E-health, and offers enhanced transportation and offers low-carbon products. However, behind those are the risks and challenges that can arise that will endanger not just the people, but our environment. Some of these issues are the security and privacy concerns, accumulation of e-wastes, and reduced necessity for labor. By being mindful of these risks, we can come up with advanced solutions that can improve IoT technologies and create a more efficient environment.