A statement heard decades ago at a small software company in the midwestern United States foreshadowed what has now become a global phenomenon: “If a toaster could emit information about itself and accept controls, our system could manage a toaster.” 1 While this has morphed into an oft-heard jest in the software world, “but does it make toast?”, the idea exposed thinking around a new phenomenon that became known as the “Internet of Things” (IoT). British entrepreneur Kevin Ashton coined the term in 1999 at Auto-ID Labs, referring to a global network of objects discoverable using radio frequency identification (RFID).