Bats are what prompted me to write my “Mobile Apps Must Die ” blog post as their app-for-every-bat approach just isn’t sustainable. As we get more and more bats in the world, the user overhead of app maintenance is going to break down. This is the primary difference between bears and bats: bears carry their interaction within them as they can afford big screens and pointing devices. Bats, being small and inexpensive, need to have it added on by another device.

But we’re not quite done with bats as there is a new form of bat that sheds their solitary outlook, creating a proper swarm of bat-ish devices. This is the “smart home” concept: filled with smart lamps, heating systems, door locks, stereo systems, and video cameras that all work in concert. For example, when I open the door, the lights go on. This raises an entirely different need for bats: the ability to coordinate.

This is a nascent field. Very few products exist now, and those that do are copying bears’ proprietary behavior: