Page 38 - Unleashing the potenti al of the Internet of Things

1 Unleashing the potential of the Internet of Things

Introduction

Social relations existed between people before the appearance of social network services as known
today. However, these social relations were constrained by time, location, space, etc.

A social networking service is a platform that enables the building of social networks or social
relations among people who share interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections. Unlike
traditional social networks or social relations, social network services make it possible to connect
people who share interests and activities across political, economic, and geographic borders, etc. In
addition, social network services make it easy to create, maintain, strengthen and extend social
networks or social relations.

The most important factor in the use of social network services is the possibility of being able to
cooperate with other people including crowd activities by sharing and exchanging information.
According to the definition of the Internet of things (IoT), things or machines collect data (either
environmental or non-environmental) and transfer this data to the information world through
communication networks. Though things or machines are interconnected with one another, the
important point of the IoT is in providing the capability for communication and data (either
environmental or non-environmental) capture to things or machines. Without collaboration or
cooperation between things or machines, they may remain isolated and constrained from a
capability point of view.

Because humans have an always-on networking capability, a social network service becomes a
great way to share and exchange information. Using this capability, it is easy for humans to acquire
information on the experience, knowledge and capability of other humans without the barriers
associated with time, space, etc.

Consequently, it can be easily understood that all networked things or machines will:
– produce numerous items of meaningful information or more specifically, captured data,
occasionally pre-processed by things or machines;
– evolve intellectually and then converse with one another, in other words, they will be
socialized.
To enable things to communicate what they do or need, follow one another, discuss with one
another, collaborate, create events and do things together demands the socialization of machines to
a level corresponding to that of social relations among humans.

24 Rec. ITU-T Y.4001/F.748.2 (11/2015)