A few months ago, I was hanging out at a cool-sounding conference in a gullible part of the country, tweeting to other attendees about how the session on “How Twitter Is Changing Your Life” was changing my life, when a thought occurred to me. I can effortlessly keep 24/7 tabs on every atomic-scale movement of my Facebook friends, but I still cannot go online to track down the things I really want to find—like my car keys, my iPod, and my long-missing Lord of the Rings embroidered-denim jacket.
It turns out I soon will be able to do exactly that, owing to the coming of something called the Internet of Things. Instead of connecting online with other people—who very likely are zombie spambots peddling pregnancy hormones as diet aids, or zombie humans insisting that the president of the United States is an alien—we will link up with the objects we own and love. Compared with our current “Internet of Whatever,” this could be a real step up.
It certainly will be for me. I want all my possessions to be networked so I can get in touch with them via a website or my phone. Please, network my pants so I can go to my pants’ website and find out if they’re in my closet or at the cleaners, or if they need to be brought to the cleaners. Network my bike, my leaf rake, my beer, and everything else so I can get up-to-the-minute reports on their location and status.
Then enable all my networked items to communicate among themselves so that, for example, my clothes will self-color-coordinate, my favorite foods will self-meal-plan and self-create a shopping list, and my umbrella and sunglasses will stop getting the weather wrong. Plus, everything from my toaster oven to my running shoes will coordinate with my credit card to replace themselves when their “check engine” light comes on...
Image courtesy of David Plunkert.
