When I watch TV (and am not PVR-ing through all of the commercials, which is most of the time), I started to notice an awful trend. It seems that there are a huge amount of ads aimed at making us lazy and even keeping us that way (such as: “Don’t exercise or eat well, just take this pill”).  On a side note, there are also way too many ads for fast food, which since they are in HD and they are aired during “peak snacking hours”, I find it incredibly cruel!  While I laugh at many of these ads, I realize that to a certain extent, M2M is adding to the problem of chronic inactivity.

In a past blog post, I wrote how M2M solutions may actually reduce our safety, as we both become too reliant on them (I actually quoted the movie “Top Gun”, in how many of our skilled people were losing their “dog-fighting skills”), and how using M2M solutions COULD cause some companies to use the data exclusively (versus the skilled senses of remote workers).  Now, I am wondering if they will make us lazy, but in a different way.

I must point out that (as written in another previous blog post), M2M solutions are being heavily used by extreme sports / marathon participants for safety and performance tracking solutions.  However, are they actually reducing our level of physical activity too much, when you balance it all out?

Here are some examples of what I am talking about:

  • I put a sensor out in my garage to keep track of moisture and temperature, so I can be notified if there is a change in state.  But....my garage is a grand total of 50 feet from my living room.  How lazy am I that I can’t get off the couch and go check on it once in a while?
  • I was talking to someone in the security space who mentioned that in many of their locations, they had abandoned the usual security patrols by their team.  Instead, they were having the security professional sit and monitor from a central desk, or in some locations, have it monitored remotely.  While it would lower costs, you’ve now taken away exercise from your employee, lowering their health and possibly their alertness levels.
  • Finally, having worked in the restaurant business, I remember having to go outside/downstairs to check on the kegs of beer, to see how full they were.  Having automation to alert you of low-levels in these containers is great, but is that just making us more lazy?  For some teenagers who text all day, that might have been their only exercise!

Counterpoint to this way of thinking

Actually, there are two:

  1. The first one (which came from our Director of Marketing, Carolyn) was that in some ways, these solutions force us to be LESS lazy, as there is more accountability provided.  By having accurate levels, combined with GPS locations of key assets, employers will be able to see what work was done, preventing lazy employees from cutting corners.  So, the salt truck driver will now actually have to spread salt in all of the areas, and not dump it randomly somewhere.
  2. The second counterpoint is that while M2M may reduce the physical nature of work in some areas, some of that work was actually quite dangerous or so overtly physically demanding, that the reduction of it was a very good thing.  I can imagine that not having to climb to the top of a 100 ft tower on a windy day is work that most people can agree is happily avoided.

Bottom Line


Stay connected --- Follow Novotech on Twitter (@NovotechM2M) or follow me personally (@LBNovotechM2M).  We’re also very active on LinkedIn, so follow our company page too.