An Eerie and Early Visualization of the Internet of Things (IoT)

I've got a short story to recommend to you. It's cerebral without being overly literary. It's got action, though no cyber-physical grid attacks. There's no shooting. No lives lost. No outages. But is there ever a lot going on! In fact, I'm pretty sure it's a parody of sorts of what may be coming our way in the not-very-distant future.

Titled "Water,' it was published last year by author and futurist, Ramez Naam.

Here's what the ad-free, neural-implanted main character experiences walking down a street in NYC:

Civic systems chattered away. The sidewalk slabs beneath his feet fed a steady stream of counts of passers-by, estimates of weight and height and gender, plots of probabilistic walking paths, data collected for the city planners. Embedded biosensors monitored the trees lining the street, the hydration of their soils, the condition of their limbs. Health monitors watched for runny noses, sneezing, coughing, any signs of an outbreak of disease. New York City’s nervous system kept constant vigil, keeping the city healthy, looking for ways to improve it.