Kevin Ashton (born 1968) is a British technology pioneer who cofounded the Auto-ID Center at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT), which created a global standard system for

RFID Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder called a tag, a radio receiver, and a transmitter. When tri ...

and other sensors.Wired Magazine, July 2004
/ref> He is known for coining the term "the

Internet of Things Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...

" to describe a system where the Internet is connected to the physical world via ubiquitous sensors.Kevin Ashton,
That 'Internet of Things' Thing
, ''RFID Journal'', 22 June 2009.

Biography

Ashton was born in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

, UK. He read Scandinavian Studies at

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

from 1990 to 1994. He was working as an assistant brand manager at

Procter & Gamble The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/con ...

(P&G) in 1997 when he became interested in using RFID to help manage P&G's

supply chain A supply chain is a complex logistics system that consists of facilities that convert raw materials into finished products and distribute them to end consumers or end customers, while supply chain management deals with the flow of goods in distri ...

. This work led him to MIT, where he helped start an RFID research consortium called the Auto-ID Center with professors Sanjay Sarma and Sunny Siu and researcher David Brock. The center opened in 1999 as an industry-sponsored research project with the goal of creating a global open standard system to put RFID everywhere. Ashton was the Center's Executive Director. Siu, then Sarma, acted as Research Director, later Chairman of Research. Under Ashton and Sarma's leadership, the number of sponsors grew to 103, and additional labs were funded at other major universities around the world. Once the system was developed, MIT licensed it to not-for-profit standards body GS1 and the project reached a successful conclusion. The labs were renamed Auto-ID Labs and continue their research. Ashton became a high-tech entrepreneur with start-ups ThingMagic,RFID Journal 2004
/ref> cleantech company EnerNOC (NASDAQ:ENOC) and Zensi, an energy-sensing company he founded with Shwetak Patel among others. Zensi was acquired by Belkin International in April 2010. Ashton then developed and launched the Belkin Wemo (originally stylized as WeMo) home automation system. He writes for RFID Journal, Medium and Quartz, and published a book, '' How to Fly a Horse'' with

Random House Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...

in 2015. In January 2016, ''How to Fly a Horse'' won "Best Business Book" from 1-800-CEO-READ. For an April 2013 Quartz article Ashton created ''Santiago Swallow'', a fictional Mexican

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

guru who specializes in the "imagined self", the fictional expert was furnished with 90,000 paid-for

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

followers and a Wikipedia biography. The creation of Swallow is an attempt to show that credibility is unrelated to the quantity of Twitter followers.

Scientific publications

Kevin Ashton's scientific publications can be found in leading science and media journals: *

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 185 ...

; *

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

; * RFID Journal; * Medium; *

Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...

References

External links

What's with this "internet of things"?, How Stuff Works

DC Velocity Thought Leader Profile

Press Release About Belkin Acquiring ZensiEarth2Tech On The History Of Zensi

How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashton, Kevin 1968 births Living people Businesspeople from Birmingham, West Midlands Radio-frequency identification