Writes Greg Papadopoulos (News.com) on the Network of Things, discussing the 3 waves of the Internet:
The first wave was a network of computers that swelled to encompass hundreds of millions of systems, all connected, all continually exchanging data.
The second wave, the one we’re riding now, could be described as a network of things that embed computers. It’s made up of wireless phones, two-way pagers and other handsets, game players, teller machines, and automobiles. In short, billions of potential connections.
The third wave is on the way, and even as we create it, we need to prepare ourselves; it’s shaping up to be a regular tsunami. I call it a network of things. Trillions of things. Things you’d hardly think of as computers. So-called sub-IP (Internet Protocol) devices such as light bulbs, environmental sensors and radio-frequency identification tags.
