In recent years both diesel and electric trains have been fitted with computer systems that reduce power to a slipping wheel until it grabs the track.
Steve McMaster, the chief executive of Sam Six, a company in Portland, Ore., that develops software for utilities to make distribution and transmission of electricity more efficient, would like to see devices throughout a home fitted with computer chips so that they could use a wireless network to report directly to utilities.
State officials who have been following the negotiations say that the truck engines are fitted with computer chips controlling fuel injection systems but that during the E.P.A.'s certification tests, the systems perform differently from the performance that prevails when the trucks are cruising on highways.
They are to be fitted with computer chips that have been loaded with digital photographs of the bearer (so that the process of comparing the face on the passport with the face on the person can be automated), digitised fingerprints and even scans of the bearer's irises, which are as unique to people as their fingerprints.A sensible precaution in a dangerous world, perhaps.
Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen's Sandbox resembles an ordinary children's sandbox, but it's covered, raised on legs, enclosed in an elegantly riveted but slightly foreboding black box the size of a double-wide coffin, and fitted with computer-controlled interior fans and a long horizontal peephole through which you can see the forces of eternity.
Over the next few years billions of new devices, from cars to household appliances and medical equipment, will be fitted with tiny computers that connect them to the web and make them more useful.
The company has been working on developing everyday cars fitted with sensors, computer and navigation equipment since 2010.
"Come see, we are a normal business," he said in his small office, fitted with a computer, a washing machine and a row of drying towels overhead.
Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.
