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The paper approaches the premises, applications, technologies and the main requirements of an emergent field of the information and communications technologies (ICT), the Internet of things (IoT), as an extension of the people’s need to communicate, which will bring, of course, a lot of data and unprecedented opportunities to improve life in the information society (IS) toward knowledge based society (KBS) context. The paper analysis shows that the main role of IoT is to collect data/information from life and environmental experience, helping people to optimize all Earth processes and finally add new value for a better and longer life for actual and next generations. One of the benefits of such a way to develop IoT is the „outcome economy”, like an expression of the intermediate steps to optimize IS/KBS, as the products and services (at most from ICT but not exclusively) will be designed and implemented to provide specific (costumized) results. The paper identifies two main categories of IoT applications, one (A) being focused on collecting and processing data concerning the operation/existence of a „thing”/device in order to optimize that thing/device operation/existence („things” could include industrial machines, home appliances, cars, toys, animals or ... trees). The second category (B) is focussed on individual/human body, in order to collect personal data useful for that person (generally for health, but not exclusively) or for entities interested in person’s behaviour. Both categories of IoT applications are further analyzed with relevant examples and revealing their main implications. The second section of the paper analyzes the means to develop IoT on a rational base, showing that communications, as main part of ICT, must provide the „smart” support for developing IoT and generally optimize not only the „things” existence/operation, but the IoT as „network of networks” too. An important issue on developing such IoT complex systems is that it supposes a set of requirements to be accomplished, in order to reach the optimizations goals with efficiency on long term. The main requirement is an infrastructure to connect the World IoT devices, including broadband (high speed) communications support (wireless, optical fiber, satellite, cable), optimized to the application specific traffic. Other analyzed requirements include IPv6 necessary addresses and new technologies for the energy (electric power) support. Predictive analytics will be in fact one of the main features of future IoT, intended to support optimization and added value, as generally it is not a problem to make software, but it is a huge challenge to make new performant algorithms for the optimization of the complex processes in IS/KBS. Including privacy, confidentiality and the intellectual property issues, the security requirements for IoT will be prominent and very difficult to comply, due to the complexity of interoperability conditions in a planetary network of networks. For implementing performant and complex IoT applications, the main ICT features which are required include: sensing and data collection capability; layers of local embedded processing capability;wired and/or wireless communication capability; software to automate tasks and enable new classes of services; remote network/cloud-based embedded processing capability; full security across all data and signal path. The paper main conclusion is that, in spite of the amazing performance of the automation/optimization processes implemented by „machines”, the risk of altering the human principles and values, by hazard or design errors, will increase and deep analyses and research must be further performed in order to assure a consistent and secure development of IoT applications for optimizing IS/KBS on long term. |
