In 1989, a CERN software engineer developed something that changed the world: an easy way to connect any piece of information online to any other piece – the hypertext markup language that enabled the World Wide Web. Today this connects 3 billion people.

History is about to repeat itself. Now, its about connecting the real world to those data systems – what some have called the Internet of Things (IoT) but is, in reality, a far broader phenomenon. This requires new data technologies tuned to interlink and communicate with billions of new sensors and detectors across the globe. Whoever leads this field will lead economies. The winners will be the Googles and Apples of the future, and their impact will be global. Europe has a unique source for this technology in its top-rated research infrastructure.

That the IoT will be economically important is the unanimous view of industry analysts; only the numbers differ. A 2014 study by management consultancy Accenture found that 13 per cent of homes already have one or more IoT devices and predicts that almost 70% will have them by 2019. Over six billion Internet-connected “things” will be in use by the end of this year, and that figure is set to rise almost four-fold by 2020, according to tech consultancy Gartner. Juniper Research goes further, predicting 38.5 billion connected devices by 2020.

This is big money – but exactly how big depends on how optimistic you want to be. Research firm IDC predicts spending will hit $1.7 trillion by 2020. More conservatively, the UK Department for Business, Innovation & Skills predicts a global market of £250 billion by 2020. Yet another view: By 2025, the economic impact will range between $2.7 trillion and $6.2 Trillion, according to McKinsey Global Institute. Whichever forecasts prove correct, the impact on economies and job creation will be vast.

The IoT is a wave of thousands of little applications that will be eventually woven together to make fully connected worlds. Connected light bulbs, highways, office buildings, tea kettles, satellites, deep-sea platforms – its all possible. Ultimately, its about making the ordinary a little more extraordinary, a little more valuable – and, when scaled up globally, a lot more productive. A few examples, many already in use:

Talking transport. American futurist Daniel Burrus forsees bridges with cement equipped with sensors to monitor stresses and cracks before they cause a catastrophe. If there’s ice on the bridge, the same sensors in the concrete will detect it and communicate via Wi-Fi to your car. Once your car knows a hazard lies ahead, he says, “it will instruct the driver to slow down, and if the driver doesn’t, then the car will slow down for him”. More generally, cars hooked up to the net will be able to pick up traffic and street conditions in advance and reroute away from areas that are congested or tied up in construction. And they’ll find parking easier too: Already, several cities from St Petersburg to Milton Keynes are trialling parking spots with sensors that tell drivers when spaces are free. But all areas of transport, not just roads, will be transformed by these technologies: the “Intelligent Airport”, loaded with sensors and data tools, will guide us stress-free (or at least with fewer delays) through terminals, gates and flight connections.

Connected health. Most attention to health monitoring has been focused on obvious medical needs. Like hypertensives tracking blood pressure continuously at home. But the impact can be far broader. AT& T and New York-based 24eight are partnering to make slippers with an Internet-connected chip for elderly people at a care centre in Texas. The number of steps a pensioner takes on the way to the kitchen could help diagnose the initial stages of Alzheimer’s disease. At the other end of the age spectrum, 24eight also created “wireless diapers: to send a text message to parents when a clean-up is required.

Smart warnings. Forewarned will be forearmed, in most sectors of the economy. GE is already making intelligent lighting grids, where each individual lamp can be remotely monitored and adjusted. The system makes it easy to pinpoint lamps that need changing and switch off those on empty roads. Oil companies are starting to implement mobile, sensor-to-machine technologies that monitor infrastructure combatting accidents in advance. The future home may use similar sensors built into the pipes that can see leaks before they occur. Rivers could Tweet their levels every few minutes, providing advance warning of floods. A preventative mindset is also visible in the sporting world, where startups like BlackBox Biometrics are developing small wireless sensors that are paired with an app to detect blows during training and gameplay.

The wired farm. In agriculture, farmers will be able to make better decisions on land use. A “ag-analytics” company called CropX sells a package of sensors and software designed to help farmers determine how much water to use in different parts of their fields, which can lead to better yields and save water. Elsewhere on the farm, cows that need milking won’t even need to moo anymore: its becoming feasible to place fitness trackers on animals to monitor their health.

There’s much more. Factories are being redesigned to take sensor-based automation to a new level. Health clinics, combining new scanners and detectors with DNA analysis, are getting better at curing and caring for each patient, individually. And don’t forget electricity grids and generators – already a sensor rich system for which new data analytics, networks and monitoring tools can save energy, balance loads and reduce carbon emissions.

Roger Blears