There’s no current value in switching on your washing machine, monitoring food levels in your fridge or mapping your drive to work. Just like there never used to be any value in idle chit chat, silly photos or sharing water-cooler gossip about the latest cultural sensation.

But that changed when Facebook made our social lives valuable to advertisers. This was the point when we willingly traded our personal information for a convenient way to keep in touch.

Next stop? The internet of things (IoT): a system that will create value from the information given up by our fridges, cars, house plants and bicycles along with everything else.  Read more »