Doors that magically unlock as you approach. Clothes that advise you when they're out of style, then tell your car how to get to the nearest sale. Cough medicine that tells you when it's time to go to the doctor. This magical, futuristic world now called the "Internet of Things" is coming straight from science fiction into your home. Like "the cloud," the "Internet of Things" is largely a marketing term designed to create buzz around a series of not-yet-ready-for-prime time technologies, and also like the cloud, you won't be able to avoid hearing about it soon.

But this time, the stakes are much higher. It’s a full-on cage match between George Jetson and George Orwell.

Maybe it's a miracle to think about high-tech insulin pumps that patients never need to touch, while doctors control them from thousands of miles away. But what happens when a hacker hijacks that insulin pump — or simply threatens to hijack it, and messages the patient that he'd better pay a ransom to keep it functioning properly? Those runaway gadgets from "The Jetsons" cartoon might not be such a laughing matter in real life.

We already have an Internet of Things — your PC, laptop, tablet, everything already connected to the Internet. What the "IoT" crowd means by "things" is "everything." They want to attach tiny computers and sensors to just about every object in the world, and make them all talk to each other.