The term Internet of things was coined in 1999 by Kevin Ashton, an assistant brand manager at Procter & Gamble. Ashton wanted to use radio frequency identification (rfid) to check the stock in P&G warehouses. rfid tags could track widgets or humans or whatever else one wanted to follow. Rather than counting every object, it would be much simpler to develop an algorithm directing the objects to count themselves. As the industrial Internet goes operational, Google is selling thousands of doorbells that double as networked surveillance cameras, connected to either your home computer or the police, and Google’s Nest brand is selling more than 100,000 “smart” thermostats a month.