The Internet of Things feels like rabbits to me.
When the English landed in Australia at the end of the 1700s, they introduced rabbits to the country to hunt for sporting purposes. They believed rabbits to be harmless. At around the same time, they introduced the Red Fox, the rabbit´s natural predator. One assumes this was to keep the rabbits in check, as foxes had always done in England in the past.
History tells us that Australia was not England. By the end of the 1800s, the prolific rabbits were creating so much agricultural damage that the New South Wales government offered a reward of £25000 for new ideas on how to exterminate rabbits. Rabbit-hunting and foxes had not been the natural check the English had expected. Foxes, meanwhile, without any natural predator, were consuming the natural wildlife with gleeful zest, wiping out species as they went.
Dealing with these invasive creatures remains an ongoing issue for Australia, over 300 years later. Indigenous floral and animal species have been eradicated, rabbit-proof fences have been built, poison has been used, rabbit-viruses have been released. All to cope with the unintended consequences of the simple release by one Thomas Austin of 24 rabbits. At the time he said “The introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm and might provide a touch of home, in addition to a spot of hunting.”