The Internet of disposable things: Throwaway paper and plastic sensors will connect everyday items

The Year is 2028. It's 8 P.M. On a Wednesday night and you're famished. You're staring wistfully at the only remaining item in your refrigerator: a package of sausages with an unappetizing grayish hue. Ugh. Did they always look like that? Are they still safe to eat? In 2018, you'd have to rely on your sense of smell and take a gamble. But in 2028, you might simply wave your smartphone over the package. The smartphone interrogates the package's embedded sensor, which measures the concentration of gases associated with meat decomposition. The smartphone displays the message "Safe to eat within the next 20 hours," and then offers a list of recipes for cooking with sausages. Too hungry to bother with the recipes, you tear open the package, toss the sausages into a frying pan, and discard the package-along with its sensor technology.