LAS VEGAS – You pull into your driveway, put your car in park, and close the garage. At this point, you fumble for your keys, feel along the wall for the light switches, and adjust the thermostat—but what if your door unlocked, lights turned on, and the house was set to a comfortable temperature before you even walked through the door? This is the very near future: the Internet of Things.
The Internet of Things brought us a Bluetooth toothbrush this year, but also some more useful devices.
It's a vague, silly, overly wrought term that describes the post-smartphone age of technology, an era where we use the computers in our pockets to control the world around us.
Over the last few years, companies have used International CES to show off all types of Internet-connected hardware: the usual suspects like phones, tablets, and PCs, but also TVs, thermostats and smoke alarms, not to mention cars, refrigerators, lightbulbs, and yes, even Bluetooth-enabled toothbrushes. It exists, therefore it is connected to the Web.
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