GETTING BACK OUR OWN:

You coined the term "the Internet of Things" in 1999, but it can still seem an odd concept. How would you describe it?

In the twentieth century, computers were brains without senses--they only knew what we told them. That was a huge limitation: there is many billion times more information in the world than people could possibly type in through a keyboard or scan with a barcode. In the twenty-first century, because of the Internet of Things, computers can sense things for themselves. It's only been a few years, but we already take networked sensors for granted. One example is GPS-based location sensing. Civilian GPS was first authorized by congress in 2000, and the GPS systems in cellphones were not tested until 2004. Yet it's already hard to imagine a world without GPS: it helps us find our way around. In the imminent future, it will enable things like self-driving cars, which will give us back the 20 days a year we spend doing nothing but driving, will save 40,000 lives a year in the U.S. alone, will reduce traffic and pollution, and will allow cities to grow without devoting as much land to roads.

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