The Internet today is affordable. About 3 billion people have access to it, and they’re using it for just about everything. We are online 24×7, checking our phones for emails and Instagram notifications. As the era of automation dawns, the internet is evolving and becoming an integral part of our lives. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of devices like vehicles, home appliances, and other electronics. They’re connected together synergistically, enabling them to change, connect, and transfer data to one another effortlessly via the internet. IoT involves extending connectivity beyond standard devices to traditionally ‘dumb’ devices and objects.

The time has now come when everything is (or will soon be) connected to everything else. As artificial and human intelligence fuse together, the world may one day become a single thinking entity. Experts are already predicting the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, in which all the ‘dumb’ machines are connected to each other.

It’s truly the ‘survival of the fittest’ principle in action. IoT is making our devices more alive by the second. “We’re at the beginning of the beginning,” says Alain Louchez, managing director of the Center for the Development and Application of Internet of Things Technologies, a global research program based at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “We’re in the foothills of a huge mountain we have to climb. We can barely guess how big the IoT transformation is going to be.”