The ‘Internet of Things’ is a term that is due to become more widely known during 2014.
One application of the Internet of Things, or IOT, is smart vending machines. For example the machine would know when it had run out of mars bars.
It would the automatically send this data to a central database, which would automatically contact a delivery driver in the field. The driver could be instructed to change his delivery route, and go to replenish the mars bars in that empty vending machine.
This is just a fraction of how machines will automatically communicate with other machines, and even with people (the delivery driver for instance).
(c) Craig Miles 2014