The Internet Of Things

Roosta writes "BBC News has an article by Bradley Horowitz, responsible for novel technology development at search giant Yahoo, looking ahead to the 'internet of things'. He discusses the importance of the 'W4' problem, the four 'W's' being who, when, what and where, and how to bring together metadata to make the world a more searchable place. 'All entities - everything from the particular chair I am sitting on to objects like the Lincoln Memorial monument should have a unique digital identifier. As an example - let's start with people. I don't know if darren@yahoo.com is the same as darren@gmail.com. There is a problem of managing identity across the internet, so when I say Darren Waters I mean this person and all of the manifestations and representations and personas of that person. The ability to knit those together is a huge challenge and opportunity for us as an industry. That's what I mean by resolving people - I mean this person and not the likely thousands of other people who share your name.'"

Comments

I'm Fruey, 563914

[fruey]

That's enough for me.

Re:I'm Fruey, 563914

[monk.e.boy]

I'm bored of numbers.

Take phone numbers - who the hell memorizes them any more. Give me URLs or email addresses, at least they are alpha numeric.

I think the story is mostly BS, just yahoo link baiting. I mean, how the hell would it actually work - and why would you want a web server in a chair?

Maybe niche market for factories, hospitals and places like that...

monk.e.boy

Can the USA still skate by with IPv4?

[tjstork]

And let everyone else do IPv6?

I don't want anything that detracts from the anonymity of today's internet. I don't like spammers and online crooks, but, really, is it worth giving up fundamental liberties and crippling our right to be well, ourselves, in order to be protected from this supposedly nefarious set of villains out to get us?

Are you people that afraid, that sold on the corporate hype that you need to give up all of your rights in order to be safe? Maybe the first business of safety is to protect your rights!