content: I agree with most everything. Add: Do you remove your battery from your cell as you travel? Nope? Well you're giving aware one of the BIGGEST personal bits of info about you every second that phone is with you. When I was a kid and loved my sci fi, I was always amazed at all the sweet crap future tech could do. "Computer, locate Commander Data"  "Commander Data is not onboard".  How cool would that be? I haven't been able to wrap my head around how we could have a future where technology becomes almost invisible to use.  You know what I want? I want my toilet to know when I need to take a leak and I'm approaching it. Lift that lid!  And I want it to know once I've finished so it can decide the appropriate level of flush. I want my self driving car so I can snooze an extra 30 min while riding to work. I want to walk into a store and have the items on my shopping list highlighted with hololens or similar. Get in, grab like a video game, get out.  Done nice and quick. And why should I have to think and write my own shopping list? Tools exist already to auto-generate meal plans and shopping lists, but they're never tailored to my preferences. I want my home AC to know when to kick back on without requiring me to schedule a time or to open an app. Why can't it know where I am through my phone? Google Nest + Android.  Make this happen google!  [note: never bothered checking if exists. prob does] I want to be as lazy as possible with menial tasks so I can have more time dealing with complex projects or studies. So two questions for civil conversation.   What other awesome stuff could potentially exist in this Internet of Things?       I'm excited for the future and would love to hear more wacky ideas   How can all this be accomplished - realistically and afford-ably (okay chrome, if you say so)  - without having to give up data to a corporation?   EDIT:  Oh, google and chrome.  2010  -  2012 Who here shops on amazon?  No one's been upset as far as I can tell.  Amazon offers a useful example of how descriptive findings are used for prediction. The (hypothetical) association between cocktail shaker and martini glass purchases, for instance, could be used, along with many other similar associations, as part of a model predicting the likelihood that a particular user will make a particular purchase. This model could match all such associations with a user's purchasing history, and predict which products they are most likely to purchase. Amazon can then serve ads based on what that user is most likely to buy.