How to Keep the Internet of Things From Repeating AOL’s Early Blunders

[Commentary] By today’s standards, America Online’s tightly controlled experience seems quaint -- and pretty silly. But that early-’90s scenario could very well repeat itself today, with the so-called Internet of Things.

Yes, this vast array of smart devices will all be connected to the public Internet, but they may already be evolving in a way where they can’t all talk to each other, where one set of devices is cut off from another, just as AOL was cut off from Prodigy or CompuServe in a pre-web version of proprietary wishful thinking.

The Internet of Things only really makes sense as a concept if lots of devices can talk to lots of very different devices -- your car to your thermostat, your fitness band to your coffee maker. Few hardware makers would openly disagree with that premise. But at the same time, corporate tech giants are racing to create competing standards through which devices will connect, and these are, in effect, the AOLs and CompuServes of today.