Internet Of Things Or Phase 2

Howard Rheingold called it Phase 2 . It's when every physical object can be connected to the Internet. Another term is the "Internet of Things".

This article is dated, but it gives a great summary of how physical objects will be able to connect to the Net.

Most industry observers agree that the next wave of growth in the technology sector will be outside the realm of the traditional PC desktop. But many think of that growth in mundane terms -- with such things as cell phones and PDAs.

In reality, we stand on the verge of an era that will see previously unimagined networked devices and objects.

With the official release of the Electronic Product Code Network, we are about to see the "Internet of things" paradigm enter the big time -- the world of mainstream commerce.

At the core of the Auto-ID Center's infrastructure for RFID technology is the EPC code, the numeric data transmitted by a tag. The EPC code is, in effect, intended to be the next generation of the Universal Product Code (UPC), or bar code, that is found on virtually every consumer item today.

Unlike a UPC bar code, EPC provides for the unique identification of any physical object in the world.

Wikipedia defines this as Object hyperlinking.
"extend the internet to objects and locations in the real world; to create an internet of things"

These "things" will need a physical world hyperlink. There will also be a browser that can resolve these hyperlinks.