Yes it will; piece by piece in those places where it makes economic sense or where it is mandated.

Already your mobile phone is in a dialog with the mobile phone infrastructure and GPS all the time it is switched on to ascertain position, availability and nearest basestation, that is even when you are not making a call.

From this you move on to the ideas of tyres talking to the vehicle, powered by the flexing of the tyre in motion, is one, providing information on pressure and tyre wear; cars talking to adjacent cars as part of accident mitigation is another.

Many applications will be enabled by the possibility of piggy-backing on the amortized smartphone and mobile phone infrastructure, albeit at risk of congesting those networks. So imagine a legion of things that report in to your smartphone and then send messages up the line.

The ultimate question then becomes one of convenience versus privacy and off-gridness. Do you want tens or hundreds of your things talking to others (potentially spending your money and effectively talking about you) behind your back?

Rick: The Internet of things is definitely disruptive. Today we're talking about the shift from PCs to tablets. This is more about the shift to refrigerators, bathroom mirrors, health delivery systems, automobiles, and every other thing we come in contact with each day.

You're a vet, so tell me: Certainly we'll see some devices -- there are already smart refrigerators, for example -- but do you think we will see the IOT within the next decade, or is this one of those inspiring visions that will end up proving to be cost ineffective? What's your best guess?

Many relatively small and little known players in a market that is leaping from its first major mainstream design wins to everywhere in the Intewrnet of Things. This is a receipe for disruption methinks. Next up, analog companies such as Maxim tooling their fabs for MEMS