From December 2013 but still very much on-the-spot.

How the “internet of things” will replace the web – Quartz.

If this all sounds like mind reading, that’s because in a way it is. Munjal Shah, entrepreneur in residence at Charles River Ventures, surveyed a thousand peopleabout what super powers they would acquire if they could. The most popular answer was “speak all languages,” but the number two answer might surprise you: the ability to comfort anyone. Shah had conducted the survey in order to determine what sort of businesses could be built to give people these abilities (the first one, universal translation, is at least plausible). Comforting a friend is, he concluded, exactly the sort of thing the internet of things would be good at. First, our connected devices will be able to monitor our state—inactivity could indicate sickness or depression. And maybe we’ve recently posted on social media about a tragedy that befell us. Text alerts are sent out to friends, asking them to reach out, and voila—in as much as mediated communication is any sort of comfort, no one need ever feel lonely again.

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Once our possessions can both sense and respond, and are directed for the most part by computers, the world becomes something like a living creature. “We believe the digital world and the physical world are merging, and that done correctly what this will do is create a virtual representation of all of our physical devices online,”said Jeff Hagins, chief technology officer of Smartthings. “What that will accomplish is that it will make the physical world programmable. When we change the digital representation, the physical world will change in response.” If your goal is to fuse your mind and body with the internet, this is good news. But if you were hoping that in the future, getting away from it all would be as simple as switching off your mobile phone, you’re in for a rude surprise.