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Nobody knows what the world is going to look like when the things around us get smarter -- when more and more of them are equipped with tiny radios that are connected to the Web.
沒有人知道，當我們周圍越來越多的物品安裝了聯網的微型無線信號接收器，從而變得越來越智能化時，世界會變成什么樣。
Which is what makes the so-called Internet of Things(IoT, per Wikipedia) so interesting, especially now that Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) have begun to show their hands.
所謂的“物聯網”（按照維基百科的說法叫Internet of Things, LOT）正是因此妙趣橫生，尤其是現在，谷歌（Google）和蘋果（Apple）也要開始大顯身手了。
Google has been experimenting with Internet-connected eye glasses, and in January it spent $3.2 billion to acquire Nest Labs, the leading purveyor of smart thermostats and smoke detectors. With Nest, it also got Tony Fadell, an ambitious ex-Apple engineering VP whose previous claim to fame was the iPod.
谷歌正在測試聯網眼鏡。今年1月，這家公司以32億美元收購了智能恒溫控制器和煙霧探測器的領先制造商Nest Labs。隨著Nest而來的，還有雄心勃勃的前蘋果工程副總裁托尼o法德爾，他曾因iPod廣為人知。
Apple has been seeding its stores with iBeacons -- miniature BlueTooth detectors for communicating with iPhones -- and it is rumored to be set to unveil, perhaps as early as next week's developers conference, two new platforms: One for monitoring your health and one for controlling your home.
蘋果也在著手打造iBeacons，這是一款用于與iPhone通信的微型藍牙探測器。還有傳聞表示，蘋果最快可能會在下周的開發者大會上公布兩個新平臺：一個用于監控人們的身體健康狀況，另一個用于管理人們的房間。
Who will make tomorrow's smart devices and how they will interact with one another is anybody's guess.
人們都在猜測，誰將會是未來智能設備的生產商，他們又將如何同其他設備進行互動。
"One vision," writes Benedict Evans, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, "is that all these devices will work on common, open standards, and talk to each other and interact in clever ways. And so, if you walk into the house with someone your security camera doesn't recognise and your calendar mentions 'date', some sort of unified learning-based system will dim the lights, turn up the thermostat and start playing Barry White."
風險投資公司安德森o霍洛維茨基金（Andreessen Horowitz）合伙人本尼迪克特o埃文斯寫道：“有種觀點認為，所有這些產品都將按照共同的開放標準設計，彼此能夠以智能的方式進行溝通和互動。如此一來，如果你與一位監控攝像機無法識別的人走進房間，而你的日歷中寫著‘約會’，那么某種一體化的學習型系統就會調暗燈光、打開恒溫器，同時播放巴里o懷特悠揚性感的樂曲。
The Barry White scenario is unlikely, Evans points out, given the history of earlier technologies that achieved First World ubiquity -- the small electric motor, for example, or the computer chip. They generally don't share data unless they come packaged in a single device -- a well-eqipped automobile, for example.
不過埃文斯指出，根據在發達國家實現過的那些早期技術的先例——比如小型電動機或電腦芯片，這種巴里o懷特式的情景不太可能出現。各種產品通常不會共享數據，除非它們被安裝在同一種設備中——比如裝備齊全的汽車。
Apple and Google would love to be the company that cashes in on -- or at least controls -- whatever turns out to be IoT equivalent of a modern automobile, with its hundreds of integrated chips and battery-powered activators. But they're approaching it from different angles -- angles that play to each's strengths.
蘋果和谷歌希望利用成百上千的集成芯片及使用電池的激活器，從好比是一輛智能汽車的物聯網中獲利，或者至少獲得對它的掌控權。不過他們實現目標的途徑不同——雙方正在從各自的強項入手。
"Many wearables feel like they should be satellites for a smartphone," writes Evans, "either as a remote sensor or a remote display, but the value ... comes from the cloud-based analytics: is it more useful to know how many hours you slept or to get big-data based suggestions as to when you should go to sleep and when you should set your alarm? iBeacon is [a] fascinating part of this dynamic, because iBeacons themselves are not connected to anything, but they add intelligence to the physical world. So every wall or retail display or suitcase or package can become a piece of data.
埃文斯寫：“許多可穿戴設備都認為自己應當成為智能手機的衛星產品，無論是充當它的遙感器還是遠程顯示器，但是它們的價值……產生于以云為基礎的分析能力：知道你每天要睡多少小時；或是從大數據中得到建議：應當何時入睡，應當設置幾點的起床鬧鐘，這樣是不是更加有用？iBeacon在這個過程中有著令人著迷的表現。因為它們并不與其他產品相連，卻給物質世界帶來了智能。如此一來，每一堵墻、每一排零售陳列柜、每一只手提箱、每一個包裹都能成為一部分數據。”
"That is, sometimes the device is dumb glass (or a dumb sensor), driven by the cloud. And sometime the cloud is dumb storage, driven by the device.
“也就是說，有時設備只是一塊被云驅動的不能說話的玻璃（或不能說話的感應器）。而有時云則是由設備驅動的傻瓜式存儲器。”
"There's an interesting Apple/Google dynamic here," writes Evans. "If most of these 'things' are some combination of smartphone satellite and cloud end-point, where is the value and control? Apple's hardware/software integration means it's best-placed to make things work well, but Google is better placed to do much of the cloud stuff."
埃文斯說：“蘋果和谷歌的發展動向非常有趣。如果大多數‘物件’都只是智能手機的衛星產品和云的終端，那如何實現價值和控制？蘋果有著集成化的硬件和軟件，意味著他們最適合讓物品各司其職，不過谷歌則更擅長云系統的相關工作。”
