Source: Mobile Analytics/Big Data by Joel Comm. Creative Commons License
The Internet of Things is an emerging technological concept of sociotechnical and economic significance. Applications of IoT is a fast-growing segment of business communities worldwide, empowering industries globally by transforming their operation and giving them faster and more efficient ways of doing business. Consumer products, medical devices, pharmaceutical products, agrifood products, durable goods, cars and trucks, industrial and utility components, sensors, and other everyday objects are being linked with Internet connectivity and powerful data analytic capabilities that promise to transform the way we work, live, and play (Rose et al., 2015). In addition to interconnectivity and interoperability, the quantum of Internet of things is also very significant. Joel Comm (2017) has predicted how quantum entanglement will impact how everyday business is conducted. Figure 3 is an illustration of the quantum IoT. The Quantum Internet of Things enables new ways of monitoring and managing all the “moving parts” that make up a business.
In their report “Unlocking the Potential of the Internet of Things”, the McKinsey Global Institute describes the broad range of potential applications regarding “settings” where IoT is expected to create value for industry and users (Manyika et al., 2015). “Some of the most promising uses are in health care, infrastructure, and public-sector services—helping society tackle some of its greatest challenges” (Manyika et al., 2013, p. 51). The Internet of Things is still in early stages of adoption, but it already has a wide variety of uses, and the portfolio of applications is expanding daily.
Indeed, in a world suffused with smart devices, it is not only our homes and workplaces that are changing but our way of life as figure 2 aptly depicts. However, smart objects are only the first step of an evolutionary process of IoT. There is a generational evolution from objects with a certain degree of smartness to objects with an actual social consciousness (Atzori, Iera, & Morabito, 2014). In analogy with the human evolution from homo sapiens to homo agens used in economic and sociological constructs, Atzori et al. (2014) used a similar evolutionary path from a res sapiens (smart object) to what they called res agens (an acting object), “which is able to translate the awareness of causal relationships — the basis of knowledge of change and evolution of its environment — into actions” (Atzori et al., 2014, p. 98).
Figure 3. Main features of the identified three categories of IoT objects