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what’s remarkable about this future isn’t the sensors, nor is it that all our sensors and objects and devices are linked together. It’s the fact that once we get enough of these objects onto our networks, they’re no longer one-off novelties or data sources but instead become a coherent system, a vast ensemble that can be choreographed, a body that can dance. Really, it’s the opposite of an “Internet,” a term that even today—in the era of the cloud and the app and the walled garden—connotes a peer-to-peer system in which each node is equally empowered. By contrast, these connected objects will act more like a swarm of drones, a distributed legion of bots, far-flung and sometimes even hidden from view but nevertheless coordinated as if they were a single giant machine.

For the Programmable World to reach its full potential, we need to pass through three stages. The first is simply the act of getting more devices onto the network—more sensors, more processors in everyday objects, more wireless hookups to extract data from the processors that already exist. The second is to make those devices rely on one another, coordinating their actions to carry out simple tasks without any human intervention. The third and final stage, once connected things become ubiquitous, is to understand them as a system to be programmed, a bona fide platform that can run software in much the same manner that a computer or smartphone can. Once we get there, that system will transform the world of everyday objects into a design­able environment, a playground for coders and engineers. It will change the whole way we think about the division between the virtual and the physical.

The PR firm, which surveyed 3,000 consumers in the UK, US and China through its Edelman Berland research arm, found that the percentage of US consumers who binge-watch has “increased significantly” in the past year – rising from 86% in 2013 to 94% this year. In China the figure was found to be an “almost universal” 99%.

72% of respondents watching so they ‘know what happens next’ and 57% noting that they do so to ‘feel caught up

Half of respondents said they were likely to use an app or website to interact with the content if it was designed by the creator (US 56%; UK 46%; China 81%) or not designed by the creator (US 52%; UK 44%; China 71%).