A recent blog note contained a powerful idea. The current web (i.e., internet) is evolving into a larger network that will allow participation by "things" by which is meant inanimate objects such as roads, bridges, or even the door to your house (see: How the Internet of Things is Changing the Way We Work). Below is an excerpt from it:
Several years ago, before the Web had become as ever-present as it is now, Wal-Mart was the shining example of a future where inanimate objects communicated, aka the Internet of Things. The company had a plan to implement RFID tags to better optimize its supply chain. The problem? The RFID technology could not be programmed to exchange data. In the past few years, we've seen the emergence of the application programming interface, or API. APIs have become very popular. It's evident when you look at the directory from Programmable Web, which has 3,000 APIs. APIs are used all the time to connect Web apps, cloud-based services, devices and increasingly, inanimate objects. APIs are making our world programmable. We can program a bridge, the door to a house or the cart that trucks your luggage to the plane. And with mobile devices, we can track that data no matter where we are and use real-time analytics and a geospatial context to find intelligence in the collective data. The Internet of Things is only practical when you have a critical mass of devices and a cloud infrastructure. We have that now. But we also need the geospatial context to know where everything is located, all the time. All of this has implications on the way we work. For example, a municipality cannot afford to replace all of its aging roads and bridges at one time. But it can place sensors to transmit data that can then be analyzed in real-time. The analysis tells the people managing the system how the bridge is faring. This can be replicated across the entire transportation network. By doing that, the systems manager can get a granular view that was not possible before. Road crews with sensors on trucks can be monitored, too. Teams can be distributed across the network, based upon the data analytics that indicate weak points and potential weak points in the system. This kind of approach means automation on a scale that we have not seen before. We need this automation as this kind of data becomes a deeply woven mesh into all aspects of society.
An API enables one software program to talk with (i.e., interact) with another one. To restate a key phrase from the excerpt above, "APIs are making our world programmable." Here is a more formal definition for API:
An application programming interface (API) is a particular set of rules and specifications that a software program can follow to access and make use of the services and resources provided by another particular software program that implements that API. It serves as an interface between different software programs and facilitates their interaction, similar to the way the user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers.
The critical elements now in place to incorporate ongoing status reports from things (e.g., bridges, roads, dishwashers, doors) are sensors with local software to interpret the signals, geolocation devices, APIs to provide interfaces among different software programs, and cloud computing. A missing element is broad coverage by community wi-fi networks. I very much like the idea of public works like bridges generating signals when something is amiss. A little too futuristic perhaps but worth thinking about.
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