Enabling technologies I¶

You are at the bus stop and the app says: "Line 3, 4 minutes". How does it know? Nobody is phoning the driver. Somewhere a small box on the bus measures its position, sends it over the mobile network to a server, the server compares it with months of past trips, and a program predicts when the bus will reach your stop. Four different technologies, one sentence on your screen.

Companies on the islands use the same building blocks. In February 2023 EMAYA, Palma's municipal water company, had already replaced 30,000 mechanical water meters with smart ones, out of about 104,000 planned by 2026. A smart meter reads the consumption every day, hour by hour, without anybody visiting the house, and raises an alarm when it detects a leak. That is not one technology either: it is a sensor, a network, a data platform and an analysis, all working together.

Unlocking the tech tree¶

A digital enabling technology is a digital technology that, on its own or combined with others, makes possible processes, products, services or business models that were not viable before. It is not the final product: it is what the product is built on.

In a city-builder game you do not buy "a better city". You unlock upgrades in the tech tree: water sensors, a traffic control room, an automatic advisor. Each upgrade does nothing spectacular by itself; it enables the next buildings and policies. Enabling technologies work the same way, and they share three features:

There is no single official list. This module works with eleven, the ones in its programme. You meet five today and six in the next lesson.

Internet of things (IoT)¶

The internet of things (IoT) is the network of physical objects with sensors (which measure) and actuators (which act) that are connected to the internet, send data and can receive orders.

EMAYA's smart water meters are IoT: the meter is the sensor, the radio network carries the reading, and a platform shows it to the company and to the customer.

Cloud¶

The cloud is computing (servers, storage, applications) that you use over the internet, on demand, instead of buying and running your own machines.

In the city-builder, the cloud is renting water and electricity from a utility instead of building your own power station. The US standards body NIST lists five characteristics, and they are the ones to remember:

You will study the cloud properly in Unit 3. Today you only need to know what it is and what it is good for.

Big data¶

Big data means data sets so large, so fast or so varied that ordinary tools (a spreadsheet, one database server) can no longer handle them.

The classic way to recognise it is the three Vs:

Artificial intelligence (AI)¶

Artificial intelligence (AI) is software that does tasks we associate with human intelligence: recognising, predicting, generating content or making decisions. Today it almost always learns from data instead of following rules written by a programmer.

The EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) defines an AI system as a machine-based system that infers from the input it receives how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations or decisions. In the city-builder, AI is the automatic advisor that tunes the traffic lights.

Unit 4 is all about AI. Remember the course rule: generative AI is not allowed in assessed work unless the teacher authorises it for a specific activity.

Cybersecurity¶

Cybersecurity is the set of technical and organisational measures that protect systems, networks and data.

It protects three properties, the CIA triad:

A real case, very close: on 13 January 2024 the Ajuntament de Calvià suffered a ransomware attack (a program that encrypts the files and asks for money to unlock them) by the LockBit 3.0 group. The attackers demanded 10 million euros; the council refused to pay and spent months restoring its systems. Availability failed for a whole town hall.

Every sensor you connect is one more door somebody can try to open. That is why cybersecurity is not "one more technology" at the end: it is a condition for all the others. Unit 5 goes deeper.

The data chain¶

The five technologies of today are rarely used alone. Most real solutions chain them like this:

flowchart LR
    S["<b>IoT</b><br>captures<br>(the sensors)"] --> C["<b>Cloud</b><br>stores and<br>processes"]
    C --> B["<b>Big data</b><br>organises"]
    B --> A["<b>AI</b><br>predicts and<br>decides"]
    A --> X["<b>Action</b><br>(close a valve,<br>call a plumber)"]
    SEC["<b>Cybersecurity</b><br>protects every link"] -.-> S
    SEC -.-> C
    SEC -.-> A

A sensor with nobody analysing its data is junk; an AI with no data learns nothing. When you propose a technology for your company, always ask: what comes before it in the chain, and what comes after?

Characteristic or application area?¶

This is the distinction the report lives on, so learn it now.

A characteristic says what the technology is like. An application area says where and for what it is used in a company.

Test: if your sentence names a department, a process or a place in the company, it is an application area. If it would be true in any company, it is a characteristic.

In class: follow a real sensor¶

Two short tasks, done in the browser, handed in as one document on Classroom (class activity, individual). No AI tools.

Part 1 — A real IoT device. Sensor.Community is a citizen-science network of home-made air-quality sensors that publish their readings openly.

Part 2 — Deployment hunt. Find one real deployment of one of today's five technologies, the one that belongs to your section of Deliverable 2 (if your section has none of today's five, take any). Prefer the Balearic Islands or your company's sector.

A company website, a public body, a newspaper or a specialised medium is fine. A forum post or an AI answer is not a source.

For your project¶

Today your group splits Deliverable 2: each member takes one section (a set of two or three technologies) and writes it down in the group log. The deployment you found today is field 2 of your first technology sheet, and the definition and characteristics are field 1. Keep the citation exactly as you wrote it: in the report every fact about a real company needs one.

Key takeaways¶

• An enabling technology makes new processes, products and services possible; it is an upgrade in the tech tree, not the final building.
• IoT captures data from the physical world with sensors and acts with actuators.
• The cloud is computing on demand over the internet: self-service, network access, pooling, elasticity, pay per use.
• Big data is defined by the three Vs: volume, velocity and variety, not by size alone.
• AI learns from data to predict, generate or decide, and it can be wrong. Cybersecurity protects confidentiality, integrity and availability, and it protects all the others.
• A characteristic says what a technology is like; an application area says where and for what the company uses it.

Quick check¶

Five technologies are about data. The next six touch the physical world, the network and trust. Next: Enabling technologies II.