In his keynote speech at Oracle Open World today, Dr. Thomas Kiessling, Chief Product and Innovation Officer of Deutsche Telekom reviewed his company’s emerging business in M2M.  One use case he described has been referred to in some circles as the “Connected Cow.” Current technology allows dairy cows to be electronically tagged for identification and equipped with temperature sensors to detect the optimum time for breeding. This can help big dairies be more efficient and productive.

When I grew up on a small dairy farm in Idaho, we weren’t nearly so high tech! But now, as we grapple with the challenges of how to administer the expanding universe of people and devices in the Internet of Things, we should also think about how to connect cows and other animals to the Internet!  After milk cows, what will be next?  Dogs and cats?  Pet hamsters?

We have quite a few milk cows in the US (about 9 million), but we have about 78 million pet dogs and 86 million cats   If we connect all them to the Internet, just think of what we could do!

But I wonder how we would establish identity trust relationships with all these connected creatures!