Leo Mirani

The “Internet of things” is one of those odd phrases that can mean many things and nothing at the same time. Between 26 and 50 million “things” will be connected to the Internet by 2020, according to various forecasts.

But not all of those things need an Internet connection, points out Davor Sutija, who runs Thinfilm, a Norwegian company working in the field of printable electronics. They don’t all need IP addresses. All they need is the ability to pass on the information they gather to something that can process the information, often via a connection to the Internet.

“Smart” objects only need to be smart enough to do that job. Unlike traditional electronics, which are made of silicon wafers mounted on boards etched with circuitry, a new generation of printable (and sometimes bendable) electronics are made in the same way as a newspaper -- by depositing an ink-like substance on a thin film (hence the name) made of a type of plastic commonly used for soft drink bottles. The result is a sheet of electronics that can be over a kilometer long, is cheap and flexible, and can be embedded into everything from clothes to food packaging.

In patient monitoring, the electronics could even make human communications more effective, for instance.

Somalia’s first terrestrial fiber optic cables have connected the country to the modern Internet.

The BBC reported that Somalis have been in “culture shock” ever since. “They’re very excited about the speed,” a spokesman from Somalia Wireless, an Internet service provider (ISP), told the BBC, which reports that: People have been flocking to hotels and Internet cafes to try out the fast service -- some seeing video platforms like YouTube and social networking sites for the first time, our correspondent says.

Until recently, Internet connectivity in Somalia came exclusively through dial-up modems and satellite. Then, Internet providers rolled out fiber optic connections in nation’s capital, Mogadishu. The cables run though Somalia’s neighbor, Kenya, which hooked up the first of four undersea cables in 2009.

[Commentary] I spent a week tethering my computer to the mobile Internet connection on my phone. It was awful. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

It took people in rich countries several years to crawl from achingly slow dial-up connections (remember those?) to ISDN lines, to true broadband. It is by now conventional wisdom that the next billion (or two billion or five billion) people to come online will do so using smartphones and mobile broadband. Indeed, it is already happening.

Yet many of these new Internet users suffer from obstacles such as intermittent electricity supply, expensive data plans (compared to average local wages), a lack of local content or language support, outdated devices and weak or non-existent financial infrastructure. Worst of all, they must put up with achingly slow Internet connections. Anybody who cares about the Internet or wants to understand how it should evolve in the coming years would do well to understand how the vast majority of the world uses it, which I did.

In one week, I consumed 4 gigabytes of data, or about as much as a DVD holds. When I got back on (50Mbps!) broadband, I used 2 gigabytes in 24 hours. YouTube became a no-go zone. It worked, but loaded slowly and paused to buffer constantly. Spotify wasn’t great either, mostly because I was generally also trying to load other things for work at the same time. It quickly became clear that I was better off listening, on repeat, to the very few MP3s on my computer. Netflix, Hulu and iPlayer? I didn’t even try. They were slow enough with my previous connection -- top speed 14Mbps -- for me to know that there was no point. Mobile broadband, despite the name, simply isn’t up to scratch for the modern web.