Are we ready for fridges that order their own milk?

When it comes to businesses, however, the internet of things – “IoT” – provides three big themes to think about: the first is that it’s coming, both as an opportunity and a threat, whether you like it or not. In a survey by Spiceworks, the professional network for IT people, 71pc said that they believed the IoT will affect consumers and businesses, while presumably the remaining 29pc were coming up for retirement.

The most revealing statistic in the survey, perhaps, was that 59pc of those surveyed were not preparing to do anything about the coming future.

That means the vast majority of people who think it’s important are also ignoring it, albeit either by choice or force. More than a quarter of respondents to the survey “don’t know how they’ll manage the influx of new connected things”.

The second key aspect of this new future is likely to be a regulatory one: although European law is clear that consumers own their own data, whatever it’s about, actually extracting it from companies big and small is difficult. Users of external gas tanks, for instance, are unlikely early adopters of the IoT, their tanks automatically telling suppliers that they’re getting empty and that more supplies should be ordered.

But try finding out, as a business or a consumer, precisely how much data is being collected, still less analysing it for yourself, and it’s a tricky task. Such data should simply be online, but it will probably take a few court test cases before we get there.

And don’t think it will be simple. On Tuesday the law firm Morrison and Foerster will present a webinar on the IoT with speakers from Brussels, Washington DC, London and Silicon Valley. The businesses that lead the way will see more positives than negatives.

Which leads neatly on to a third point: typified by Google’s driverless cars – simply a clever thing connected to the web’s online maps, in many ways – it’s easy to say the IoT will hand jobs to machines.

In some cases, that may well be true, and I won’t be rushing to set up a minicab business any time soon. But much of the IoT’s revolution is likely to be about providing new opportunities for existing businesses. If that boiler tells you it needs servicing, or better still tells a heating company they should prompt a customer to service it, then it encourages new business opportunities. Some of these chances will provide new subscription models, too.

We’re edging closer to the days of the fridge ordering its own milk, and it will be an era that will provide a host of new opportunities for forward-thinking firms.

Some of those might even include internet-savvy dairy farmers.

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