smart tech

A catch all phrase for a wide variety of technology that is made possible by the convergence of two trends that will profoundly reshape the world around us.

First, thanks to the proliferation of cheap, powerful sensors, the most commonplace objects can understand what we do with them—from umbrellas that know it's going to rain to shoes that know they're wearing out—and alert us to potential problems and programmed priorities. These objects are no longer just "dumb" passive matter. With some help from crowdsourcing or artificial intelligence, they can be taught to distinguish between responsible and irresponsible behavior, and then punish or reward us accordingly—in real time.

And because our personal identities are now so firmly pegged to our profiles on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, our every interaction with such objects can be made "social"—that is, visible to our friends. These two features are the essential ingredients of a new breed of so-called smart technologies, including:

• smart antenna
• smart bra
• smart card
• smart clothes
• smart grid
• smart home
• smart phone
• smart road
• smart seats
• smart sock
• smart watch

The term "smart" originally comes from the acronym "Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology" but become widely known as "smart" because of the notion of allowing previously inanimate objects—from cars to basketballs to clothes—to talk back to us and even guide our behavior.