The computers are breeding. Little computers serving different purposes are invented every year. First, the computers became small enough to be held in palms and laps, and then they entered into phones. 

Thanks to Steve Jobs, a new branch of tablets have been added to the technological evolution tree. Samsung added the watch to the latest family of computing gadgets that are connected to the network.

Once the Internet was born, computers began evolving into other devices like smartphones and tablets. These were given access to the Internet too. Now, there is a different breed of devices that digital evolution has put forth, and they want in on the Internet.

Smart homes, smart cars and smart washing machines are taking over. Smart grids have small meters attached to electricity cables that measure usage in regular intervals and report this data back to electricity providers. Finer measurement and higher control on the grid allows for efficient relay of electricity along with higher resolution tariffs. Smart cars armed with their army of sensors will relay all sorts of measurements into the network for other cars to benefit from.

The latest addition to the family is the wheel. MIT-based startup Superpedestrian is expected to roll out a smart wheel, the Copenhagen Wheel, in the first quarter of 2014. The Copenhagen Wheel is a pluggable bicycle wheel that assists the rider with varying amounts of power based on the terrain topography. It contains a dynamo that charges as you pedal and then uses that charge to power the wheel rotations during steeper climbs.

With automatic locks, a customizable GPS navigation and a software development kit that enables the geekier riders to build their own network applications and provide greater control of the wheel and the algorithms it uses, the Copenhagen wheel is sleek. 

Welcome the newly reinvented wheel to the family.

All of these things want to get on the Internet. They want to talk to each other and also to central servers, coupled with whom they provide meaningful services.

The thing with computers talking is that there are different kinds of conversations. Some are short, frequent hello messages and some are lengthy file transfers that eat up a lot of bandwidth. These things will create a lot of traffic that the current infrastructure will not be able to hold. A newer architecture of the Internet is not only necessary but is in the pipeline to enable these things to get on the Internet. These newer conversations between things are different from the ones we know today.

Google’s Vint Cerf, legendarily known as the father of the Internet, gave a talk at the Federal Trade Commission’s workshop on the Internet of Things in November. He highlighted the key challenges that the IoT brings. He reckons, for good measure, that the data these things are transferring over the Internet ranges anywhere from meter usage to crucial personal authentication information. How much can you trust your diabetes monitor to not relay your health information to the NSA?

“Connected devices can communicate with consumers, transmit data back to companies and compile data for third parties such as researchers, healthcare providers, or even other consumers, who can measure their product usage compares with that of their neighbors,” Cerf said at the talk.

Even as security, reliability and affordability of these networks are debated, policy and regulation are other challenges that Cerf pointed out.

Unless a creature evolves, it will die. The newest evolution is adding about twice as many devices on the Internet as it currently holds. There are difficult problems to solve. But these things are here for our benefit, or so we believe, and hence the industry will readily clear all road blocks. Either that or the computers die.