Granularity and Big Data and Getting The Internet and The World Wide Web Straight

This blog entry is a general mix of intuition and observation of a variety of things related to the Internet of Things.  It is entirely exploratory since I have only an intent to look at it without an established plan as to how to go about it.

So I will ramble and kick the bushes and see what comes out.

(This was added after I finished this blog entry:  I diverged too far and the only way to keep the focus of intent on track is end this by continuing it in  the next blog entry)

As a start point I will use this link as a place to start:  "New Sensors Will Scoop Up Big Data On Chicago".   I could have started anywhere among the many sites I looked at this morning that relate to one or more aspects of what I want to look at.  This link makes as good a point of entry to the problem domain as any of the others.  

But I want to digress before meandering to get something clearly straight from the start:

I think that the "Internet of Things" is a cloaking device intended to hide or place in background what the matter is really all about:  The World Wide Web of Information.  Perhaps there is a better phrase describing what the Internet of Things is cloaking but the true nature of what it is hiding or disguising may not yet be a popular term. 

For example,  I was talking about Tim-Berners Lee with someone and his latest and greatest idea for HTTPA.  They did not know who he was.  I said that he created the internet.  Absolutely wrong and my serious error but the words came out before I even thought about it.  Not the internet but the World Wide Web.  

Is hiding and confusing something by "Framing the Issue" in a certain way the method that has become typical of "political-speak" and media manipulation? 

The "Internet of Things"  frames the issue to talk about the sensors.  The vital social issue is what information these sensors are detecting and how it is being aggregated to big data.

The Internet is a thing.  A worldwide connection of computer networks.  Like a global highway system connecting to city streets connecting to our own driveways.  A way to get from here to there where "there" is anywhere anyone wishes to go.  TCP-IP is described here as what I would call the roadmap that enables us to get where we want to go.

The World Wide Web is the system of interlinked (Hyperlinked) documents that is the content of the the total system of internet things that gives us access to the information that is this glorious World Wide Web of information.

To focus on the Internet or use the term: "Internet of Things" when the meaning is to talk about information is like focusing on the car and the road when the most important thing is that they are taking us on a vacation.  Or something like that.  Like looking at a picture thing and not seeing what it is all about.

The Chicago Tribune report addresses the Big Data about us and our environment that the sensors create.  The academic framing of this is to call it an "Array of Things"

"Researchers have dubbed their effort the "Array of Things" project. Gathering and publishing such a broad swatch of data will give scientists the tools to make Chicago a safer, more efficient and cleaner place to live, said Catlett, director of the Urban Center for Computation and Data, part of a joint initiative between the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory."

While research scientists may allude to the downstream benefits of whatever they are researching they are not the ones that will generally be applying the development of tools.  Or, maybe they are if they are aware of how much money is involved in the application of their research if they jump from academics to commercial application.  That in itself is something to investigate in regard to patents held by professors jointly with universities and the establishment of university associated quasi private enterprise entities connected to university professors that did the research.  Revolving Door model?

I started this journey in  my "computer car" to get on the road and go somewhere.   Then I got wrapped up in looking at the difference between the car/road thing and where I really want to go using them and what I want to learn.

On to the next entry which is about the journey and not the vehicle that might distract me and who is in the drivers seat telling me to forget about where I am being taken and just look out the window at an array of "things" as they describe them.