How big is the Internet of Things and how big will it get?

New information technologies have transformed world politics, and not always for the better. Even trying to understand how technology connects us reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the Internet. To understand what the Internet is becoming, let’s start with some basic questions—how big is it and how big will it be?

In 2012, a creative programmer decided that it might be an interesting exercise to count all the devices that were connected to the Internet. Completing an Internet census was an intellectual and engineering challenge. Critically the census must be completed without interfering with them or slowing down the Internet. So the census taker built a “bot” and created a “botnet.”

(Continue reading in the Brookings Institution’s TechTank Blog)