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

you forgot the 5th "w"

[griffjon]

...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?

I like my privacy, so please, no email ID

[ion]

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.

Re:I like my privacy, so please, no email ID

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Today, only your IP address is associated with downloading a copy of Shrek 3. IPv6 is going to make sure that your cable modem, your computer, your RAM and your hard disk are all associated with downloading a copy of Shrek 4.

One way or another, no it's not.

I am becoming increasingly conscious of my on-line footprint, the sheer scale of collection of data about me in real life, and the ways it is being used to my disadvantage. Some of those are sinister, but most are simply businesses or government departments using their greater resources to screw me out of things. Either way, I am personally damaged as a result.

I have always challenged things like asking for all my contact details in a shop when they have no need of them, and I'm sure a lot of people simply lie on various sign-up web pages that ask for information that isn't necessary to provide whatever feature or service is being requested. Now I've got to the point of actively disconnecting from social networking sites that are harvesting information about me, and I'm considering filing formal complaints with my representatives about certain well-known organisations who are obviously storing my credit card details in their databases beyond the end of our transactions.

I care enough about this issue — and more to the point, I suspect enough other people do as well — that if the pressure keeps ramping up, and damaging incidents like losing a whole database of credit card numbers keep happening, I think pretty draconian pro-privacy laws will gain political will long before universal tracking is a reality. All the lobbying and campaign funding in the world won't buy the law back once enough voters have personally been hurt by someone screwing this up.

Author needs to get out of the basement

[Harmonious Botch]

'All entities - everything from the particular chair I am sitting on to objects like the Lincoln Memorial monument should have a unique digital identifier. Jawohl! Everything vill be numbered today und vill be ready for inspection tomorrow.

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.

Re:Author needs to get out of the basement

[kpharmer]

And regardless of the deployable outcomes of linking *too much* personal data...

Side note: notice that he talked about links our email addresses, but didn't talk about linking corporate identities? How about shedding a little light on the incestuous relationships between corporate boards & ceos?

But aside from that - the real world consists of things that are hard to classify:
    where their boundaries are gradual:
        - rivers (change over time)
        - events (see example from TFA about coffee shop outside of event)
        - times (new years eve party started exactly when? 8:00 pm? 11:00 pm?)
    or where there are different opinions about what a thing is:
        - table can be a chair if you sit on it (see Wittgenstein)
        - a stick can be a tool, weapon, toy, etc
        - what a computer is has changed over the past 90 years
    or where there are arguments over which parts of a thing are the thing:
        - is your mouse part of your computer? how about your monitor? your hard drive?
        - does your home include the yard? odds are sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't

And this doesn't even touch on concepts (the TFA stated that we should label concepts). That's truly rediculous. Imagine the above problems magnified a hundred times to deal with abstract concepts and language.

A philosophy of approach

[naoursla]

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.

groceries

[another_fanboy]

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.

Re:There's this thing called privacy

[poot_rootbeer]

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.