Headsup: Talk Amongst YourselvesHeadsup: Talk Amongst Yourselves

Is our world fully immersed in the potential of the global Internet, or have we only dipped a toe in? Evangelists of the M2M revolution say we ain't seen nothin' yet. Machine-to-machine communication is causing an exponential rise in networked nodes and communication activity among them. According to Forrester Research, from 2005 onward the number of machines and physical objects connected invisibly-without human intervention-will exceed the number of humans.

Networked machines equipped with sensors or basic computing functions certainly aren't new. Take SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition), for instance. It's been in use since the 1980s. But the annual M2M Conference & Expo is about to meet for only the second time, and the unaffiliated M2M Magazine just launched a little more than a year ago. Why the buzz now? We see broader adoption of RFID chips and improved wireless phone technology as two catalysts. Both increase the likelihood of inanimate devices collaborating automatically-even intelligently-across supply chains.