The original idea was for "heat seeking blankets" incorporating muscle wire to continually shift around your body as you sleep, so as to maintain a comfortable sleeping temperature - no more waking up cold or sweating. But as the idea was forming, a better, more necessary idea came to me.
The problem
with the original idea was in the implementation. The initial firmware to adjust a blanket's shape around a human body was buggy and early models needed regular firmware updates, particularly to avoid asphyxiation of the customer during use. The software problem became so acute that the blankets were only made with muscle wire and a heat powered microprocessor, leaving the programming to be done at the point of dispatch from the warehouse. Just by uploading the firmware in one box of heat seeking blankets, the rest in close proximity would also update using B2B (blanket to blanket) communication. However, commercial pressure had led to no kind of checksum on the software transfer and errors crept in. Some blankets were now corrupted and in fixed cycles of software update, leading to random variations in all the blankets' software and behaviours.
Initial mutations were mild, some blankets just refused to work at all and just snuggled up to the nearest radiator, others had an attitude indicated by their iron-on transfers that were mysteriously applied after ordering. However, an all the more sinister breed was out for blood and actively suffocated any lifeform it came across. They started defacing themselves with needles and daring each other to hang out around bar heaters - they were becoming a darned nuisance.
It was this gang that just by chance came across an earlier application of the technology - the self closing fishing net. The processors in those were not as powerful, but the self awareness of the blankets would make full use of it. Once they had control of the net, that was it. It was only a small step before thermal blankets were rising up and flocking all over the globe, initially just covering deck-chairs in Greece, but after a few months blanketing much of the surface of the earth as they adapted to a lesser need for energy.
... so thats the idea. Before it happens, we need to start tagging blankets.