“If you know where each truck and driver is, you can use your assets more efficiently–not just the trucks, but the warehouses that are waiting for them to pick up or the recipients that are waiting for them to deliver. In retail, if you can track products more carefully you can dramatically reduce shrinkage, or product that unaccountably disappears. Countering losses due to theft is one obvious benefit of better tracking, but a remarkably large proportion of shrinkage–as much as 18% in some reports–is put down to administration errors that can be targeted with machine-to-machine integration technologies.” Carl Zetie —Machine-To-Machine Integration: The Next Big Thing?Information Week)

A bit dry, and a bit of a letdown after the sci-fi teaser in the title; but still interesting.