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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.'"
Great -- thanks for giving away my e-mail addresses. At least now I know who to credit for my new influx of spam.
--Darren
...Why?
I'm all for spimes/blogjects/fountains that respond to stock prices, but for crissakes why does my inanimate chair need an IPv6 address?
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I am not sure that i want anyone but those i tell to know if darren@yahoo.com and darren@gmail.com is read by the same person.
No. The world should not be re-organized to suit computers. Computers should be reprogrammed to handle a complex world.
We see one of the classic symptoms of the bureaucrat here: someone who thinks that the person - or thing - should be subordinate to the numbering system.
Will it be called the World Wide Who, When, What and Where Web? WWWWWWW is quite catchy I think.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
We can modify the entire world so that our current machines can operate effectively, or we can modify our machines to operate in the current world.
We can give every person a serial number and an easy means for machines to track that serial number, or we can train the machines to do voice and face recognition to do authentication the way humans do. We can attach RFID tags to every item sold at every store, or we can develop vision algorithms to recognize and track the items with cameras to achieve the same results.
I worry that modifying the world to make it easy for machines will make the world difficult for humans. We should modify the machines fit our needs not the other way around. I would rather live in a world that is full of robots than live inside a giant world-sized robot.
Changing the environment for to help machines operate is nothing new. Railroad tracks provide navigational control for a very non-intelligent transportation machine.
FTA: I am in a supermarket and I pick up a can of tomatoes and I place it in the shopping trolley. Immediately my mobile phone flashes green to indicate to me that it is a good buy. I go down the aisle and choose a bottle of wine but this time my phone flashes red to suggest I reconsider.
Great. Now I have to get permission from my phone to go grocery shopping.
16) And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads,
17) that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name.
Who knew it would be an IPv6 address?
Why? Seriously, why should my chair have some unique identifier, and why should you need to search it? It is a physical entity that I sit on. If it is physically present then I can sit there, if not then I'll hunt for it myself. I don't need google to find it.
Good!
Central management of internet identities and central linking also means no anonymity. No ability to create an identity on a per user group basis. Why should the people I discuss 40wheeling with be able to link to my identity as a campaigner for gay rights? The two are separate worlds and I like them that way. They don't need to interact and I see no reason that you should force them to interact.
Tough, go join another industry.
When last I checked Yahoo was in the business of searching out information not mapping all things including my chair. I don't want Yahoo to know about my chair, that is why I didn't make a webpage for it.
Yes well again I'm not wooed by your crocodile tears. Yes when looking up things there is the possibility of confusion but some global numbering system won't change that really. Even if such a system was implemented it would reduce privacy, probably by outing many a closet homosexual, but the people who really wanted to game it still would and even though you matched the serial number for Bob Henderson at 2213 Mockingbird Lane, and found that he likes Monster trucks, and old Judy Garland Movies you still wouldn't be able to believe it. Because someone who wanted to hide their love of Monster trucks may just have been posting under his name.
Even if you put the force of law and economics behind it, say the way that credit card fraud is banned it will still happen. The net result of an internet of things would be 1) My chair having its own fan club 2) Yahoo getting into the ChoicePoint voter-roll purging busines, and 3) people too weak to protect themselves being outed for no good reason.
Lest we forget there is a reason for anonymity in this world. Many people, esp those coping with personally difficult things, want to broach them under different identities for fear of persecution. Others, like me, just value our privacy as a matter of course and feel that more information only benefits others, not us. Finally dangerous or unpopular ideas (say phamplets advocating for the American Revolution, democracy, and the rights of man) cannot be published except anonymously for fear of violent reprisal. That's why Benjamin Franklin used the name 'Mrs. Silence Dogood'.
What a strange world he must live in if he thinks we actually _WANT_ everyone to know everything we do and to search all information that's available.
Oh, he's under no pretense that YOU want any of that. He thinks that there are businesses that would pay his company a basket full of dollar signs because THEY want to search all information that's available about who you are and what you do, regardless of what you want. And he's right.
"...the four 'W's' being who, when, what and where, and how..."
For very large values of 4.
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