Founded in 2014, The Dandy Lab is a retail start-up in the heart of London enhancing the high street with digital technology. Filled with as much smart tech as there is clothing, The Dandy Lab recognises the potentially huge impact of the Internet of Things on the consumer-facing side of retail.

With the news of Samsung spying through televisions, Ford bugging cars and yesterday’s internet wunderkinds – Google, Facebook, Amazon – feeling like today’s big corporates, internet critic Andrew Keen gives his views on potential digital dystopias in his book The Internet Is Not The Answer.

The Chinese phrase guang jie (‘window shopping’) is relatively new, along with the overall concept of shopping for leisure in China, which has grown with the country’s wealth. But the uptake of shopping in the internet era is stalling the growth of brick-and-mortar retail.

Some argue that iBeacon has the potential to completely change the way we interact with environments, from retail outlets to museums – and others even claim that it could “change the world forever”. But what makes it so special?