In 1964, in his work Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan stated: “….by means of electric media, we set up a dynamic by which all previous technologies — including cities — will be translated into information systems“

These information systems have evolved rapidly, in accordance with Moore’s Law, for decades. As the number of transistors per square inch has doubled, and doubled (approximately every 18 months) the reach of electronics and clouds and connected systems has increased by orders of magnitude.

The computing power that once took a 15lb CRT monitor and a dedicated processing tower to harness now exists on imperceptibly small wafers. What was once too cumbersome for a home office now seamlessly powers a watch, a toaster, a thermostat or an LED lightbulb.

According to SmallBizTrends,

Currently, the total number of connected devices is estimated to stand at somewhere north of 22.9 billion. By 2020, that figure will scale to more than 50.1 billion devices.

That’s approximately seven smart devices allocated to every single person on the planet. That is beyond the Internet of Things. That is the substructure of an information system overlaid onto the very fabric of reality — populated by a near infinity of objects, scanning, tracking and optimizing in harmony.