What Happens When The Internet Gets a Body?

Smack in the center of Palo Alto, Calif., sits a huge warehouse featuring three-story ceilings and at least 15,000 square feet of open space. Standing as it does in the very zip code that gave birth to Google, Facebook, and HP, this building represents some of the most valuable real estate on the planet. Inside, a platoon of workers bend metal and install soundproof glass, readying the structure for its rebirth. If Andy Rubin and his backers have their way, this former apricot canning facility will become ground zero for a massive shift in how society and business understand not just data, computing, and the Internet, but the very workings of the world around us. Back in 2016, we'll tell our kids, we didn't have the actual Internet. Call it the actuated Internet -- a virtuous circle of real world objects, at-scale artificial intelligence, and command and control that animates everything of value in our lives.