A thing is a discussion between several participants. From the point of view of each participant, the discussion manifests as an interaction between the participant with the other participants, or with itself.
There is no need for a global timing of the interactions between participants involved in the discussion, therefore we talk about an asynchronous discussion.
Each participant is an autonomous entity. Therefore we talk about a decentralized discussion.
The thing is the discussion and the discussion is the thing.
When the discussion reaches an agreement, the agreement is an object. Objects are frozen discussions, frozen things.
In the true Internet of Things, the participants can be humans or virtual entities. The true internet of Things is the thing of all things, the discussion of all discussions. Therefore the true Internet of Things has to be asynchronous and decentralized.
The objects of the true Internet of Things are the objects of discussions. For example a cat.
Concentrating exclusively on objects is only a manifestation of the modern aversion of having a conversation. This aversion manifests in many ways (some of them extremely useful):
- as a preference towards analysis, one of the tools of the scientific method
- as the belief in the semantics, as if there is a meaning which can be attached to an object, excluding any discussion about it
- as externalization of discussions, like property rights which are protected by laws, like the use of the commons
- as the belief in objective reality, which claims that the world is made by objects, thus neglecting the nature of objects as agreements reached (by humans) about some selected aspects of reality
- as the preference towards using bottlenecks and pyramidal organization as a mean to avoid discussions
- as various philosophical currents, like pragmatism, which subordinates things (discussions) to their objects (although it recognizes the importance of the discussion itself, as long as it is carefully crippled in order that it does not overthrow the object’s importance).
Though we need agreements, we need to rely on objects (as evidence), there is no need to limit the future true Internet of Things to an Internet of Objects.
We already have something called Internet of Things, or at least something which will become an Internet of Things, but it seems to be designed as an Internet of Objects. What is the difference? Read Notes for “Internet of things not Internet of objects”.
Besides humans, there will be the other participants in the IoT, in fact the underlying connective mesh which should support the true Internet of Things. My proposal is to use an artificial chemistry model mixed with the actor model, in order to have only the strengths of both models:
- does not need an overlooking controller,
- it works without needing to have a meaning, purpose or in any other ways being oriented to problem solving
- does not need to halt
- inputs, processing and output have the same nature (i.e. just chemical molecules and their proximity-based interactions).
without having the weaknesses:
- the global view of Chemical Reaction Networks,
- the generality of behaviours of the actors in the actor model, which forces the model to be seen as a high level, organizing the way of thinking about particular computing tasks, instead of being a very low level, simple and concrete model.
With these explanations, please go and read again three older posts and a page, if interested to understand more:
- How to plant a Seed (I)
- Mathematics, things, objects, and brains
- What is new in distributed GLC?
- Distributed GLC page.