Today your car's behaviors are controlled by on-board computers that run firmware that is basically assembly level software written down into the hardware in one fashion or another. You can get your car a software upgrade.
The car is complex and exhibits complex behavior by design. The more complex the behavior the more valuable the ability to program it. My house, for example, has an IP address. I can program my home to keep different temperatures at different levels at different times of the year. The ability to program my house more directly would be valuable yet I can't do that yet.
When we start seeing more and more programmable things in our world we will see the need for more and more programs. We will desire for more and more interconnection of those things. We will need more software. Software becomes something that isn't the domain of a server, it becomes embedded in our world.
Where would more intelligence make sense? Do I need a smart coffee maker? How would I send an upgrade to it if I had a smart coffee maker?
I want to start playing with these ideas. To do that I need something like a pico computer that I can program with existing Open Source software. A computer with wifi that I can stuff in the sole of a shoe and won't mind getting sweaty. Anybody selling one of those?
