In the Bible's Book of Genesis, all the world spoke one language. They all got together and were building the Tower of Babel until God came down and confused the languages. A new group, called the AllSeen Alliance, think they have found a way around God's curse...at least for machines. Qualcomm, one of the members of the group, is giving the AllSeen Alliance the source code to a piece of software called 'AllJoyn'. AllJoyn is a sort of universal translator that will enable different devices built by different manufacturers to talk to one another.
Their ultimate goal in all of this is to promote the long-talked-about-but-never-realized 'internet of things'. The internet of things is a system in which your home appliances, electronics, automobile and pretty much anything else you can think of will all talk to one another over an internet connection. And it is all supposed to make our lives better by eliminating the effort of doing things such as adjusting the thermostat in your home or adjusting and tuning your radio. It will know who are and where you are. It will develop a profile for you of age, preferences and schedule. And it will all be perfectly confidential, just like everything else on the internet. Yes, that is sarcasm.
