The Importance of Being Thing Or the Trivial Role of Powering Serious IoT Scenarios

In this article, we call for a "Walk Before You Run" adjustment in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) research and development exercise. Without first settling the quest for what thing is or could be or do, we run the risk of presumptuous visions, or hypes, that can only fail the realities and limits of what is actually possible, leading to customers and consumers confusion as well as market hesitations. Specifically, without a carefully-designed Thing architecture in place, it will be very difficult to find the "magic" we are so addicted and accustomed to - programming! Programming the IoT, as we once programmed the mainframe, the workstation, the PC and the mobile devices, is the natural way to realize a fancy IoT scenario or an application. Without Thing architectures and their enablement of new programming models for IoT - we will continue to only envision fancy scenarios but unable to unleash the IoT full potential. This article raises these concerns and provides a view into the future by first looking back into our short history of pervasive computing. The article focuses on the domain of "Personal" IoT and will address key new requirements for such Thing architecture. Also, practicing what we preach, we present our ongoing efforts on the Atlas Thing Architecture showing how it supports a variety of thing notions, and how it enables novel models for programmability.