Hacker News Reader

Comment by erikstarck | Hacker News Reader

We've been through the internet of documents (Google). Then came the internet of people (Facebook). And the internet of places (Foursquare).

Next up is the internet of objects.

View on HN

That internet of things thing is promising, but imho no one has yet identified which problems the people really want to solve. Ultra-cheap wifi/sensors/little_but_not_too_much_cpu/extensible modules are yet to come, what will happen when 4-5$ modules will be available?

It's simple. Every object should have a URL with its history, owners, manufacturer, components, value etc.

A Facebook of objects. Someone should build it.

This is true! Have you thought a lot about it?

What is to entice people to start using it?

I have had similar ideas for a long time, ever since I was passed the possession of the (defunct) skivsamling.nu. One idea, as a motivator, is for insurance purposes.

I can see a lot of applications, but for it to take off it has to be fun to do it.

Also, do you have an idea of how to identify each object?

Isn't that part of what the Semantic Web is supposed to be?

Sure, but that comment reminds me of slide 7 here: http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lesson...

That's odd: I feel like I know exactly what you mean. :-P

as in, an internet of fridges and door locks and cars? good god, the viruses... let's put off the internet of objects until we have a web browser that isn't exploited every other month.

I dunno, when someone gets their front door phished, then maybe normal people will start to care about getting rid of IE6...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com