Television seems like a potential driver since consumers want to be able to get any content any time, conveniently. And Internet media companies will figure out partnerships to push their content to those devices.

But what’s the added value to a household from appliance networking?

Maybe (and this is a big maybe) measuring power consumption and balancing it to keep it under a certain threshold, especially in tiered pricing areas. Electricity, water and sometimes phone calls are the only things we use when we don’t know how much it costs.

But I really don’t want to have to get anti-virus software for my dishwasher.