Later this week I will be reporting on the embedded world conference, where the Internet of Things was the major topic. Just before embedded world was Mobile World Congress, which has become as big a circus as the Consumer Electronics show. There again the Internet of Things was a huge topic.

Today CeBIT opens in Hannover. Once just a specialist computing exhibition and conference, spinning off from the massive industrial exhibition of the Hannover Fair, it too has become enormous. And last night at the opening of the fair by Chancellor Merkel of Germany, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, announced that the British Government is going to invest £73 million (around $120 million) in research in areas linked to the Internet of Things.

Perhaps not entirely by coincidence, several of the heavy weight British Sunday papers devoted several pages to explaining the Internet of Things to their readers. With all this hype it has the appearance of being another tech bubble. But it would be wrong to dismiss it as that. Whatever the public gesturing, interconnectivity, remote access to monitor and control domestic appliances, and all the other things that are pouring into the Internet of Things soup, these form a trend that is not going to be reversed. The job for engineers is surely to make sure that as these things come together they are secure, safe and reliable