BARCELONA, Spain (CNNMoney) -- By the end of this decade, your smartphone will park your car, make you toast, and, yes, it will do your laundry.
We probably still won't have flying cars in 10 years, but your pills will tell you when to take them, your home will save you money on your electric bill, and your tea kettle will let your kids know you're okay.
The reason: embedded connectivity.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, companies like IBM (IBM, Fortune 500), Qualcomm (QCOMM), AT&T (T, Fortune 500) and Ericsson showed off their vision of a not-too-distant future in which every item in your life, from your refrigerator to your fridge magnets, will soon connect to the Internet or communicate other Internet-connected gizmos.
Here's how it would work: Electric devices like washing machines, thermostats and televisions will be manufactured with chips that allow them to wirelessly connect to the Internet. Non-electric items will either come with low-energy, Bluetooth-like transmitters that can send information to an Internet-connected hub or radio frequency identification (RFID) tags that can be sensed by Internet-connected near-field communication (NFC) readers.
Think that's crazy? It's already happening. On the market today, there are televisions that can be set to record shows from a smartphone, pill bottles that make phone calls and clothing with RFID tags. IBM developed software that currently controls 1,500 completely connected homes around the world.
What we're doing is creating the Facebook of devices, said IBM Director of Consumer Electronics Scott Burnett. Everything wants to be its friend, and then it's connected to the network of your other device. For instance, your electric car will want to 'friend' your electric meter, which will 'friend' the electric company.
