There are amusing ideas for the Internet of Things — Net-connected houseplants, for example. But lest you think hooking just about everything up to the Internet is silly or sci-fi, consider this more serious example: telling police exactly where in a city somebody has just started shooting. A company called SST has been doing that with technology called ShotSpotter that spreads an array of computer-powered microphones across a city. They notice the sharp crack of outdoor gunfire, then send the data to a computer that calculates just where the shots were fired based on how long it took the audio signal to reach the microphones. At the same time, miniaturization means that the Internet of Things is spreading, and that means changes to how we live our increasingly data-infused lives.