Read Cory Doctrow's book Makers. It wraps the possibilities of this sort of thing up in a nice narrative.

The point of these is that nobody is really sure what we'll be able to do with them yet. But by lowering the barrier to entry to an affordable price, then people can tinker and come up with some great, innovative technologies.

An example that I can think of off the top of my head is imagine if every piece of food you bought could connect to your wireless network via an extremely small but durable network adaptor. You couple this with a few sensors and you've got instant shopping lists based on what is in your fridge/pantry, instant recipes, used by date tracking and who knows what else.