Newish term: "Internet of Things"

Thu Jan 16 16:44:27 UTC 2014

This term has received a boost in the past couple of days because of Google's acquisition of Nest. For a (non-linguistic) discussion of the issues that raises, feel free to read my blog (address in my sig )

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)

Nobody at Wayne State will EVER ask you for your password. Never send it to anyone in an email, no matter how authentic the email looks.

----- Original Message -----

> From: "Hugo" <hugovk at GMAIL.COM>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2014 5:35:19 AM
> Subject: Newish term: "Internet of Things"

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Hugo <hugovk at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Newish term: "Internet of Things"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> From Mike Kuniavsky on Twitter (@mikekuniavsky8h):

> Guess who won the "what is it that we call this 'computers
> everywhere'
> phenomenon?" naming race: http://t.co/03DoR6iVcd #googletrendsexplore

> "Internet of thing" is now the clear winner by an order of magnitude,
> over earlier terms "ubiquitous computing", "pervasive computing" and
> "ambient intelligence".

> Wiktionary defines it as:

> A proposed Internet-like structure connecting everyday physical
> objects equipped with RFID or similar tags.

> Wikipedia says:

> The Internet of Things (or IoT for short) refers to uniquely
> identifiable objects and their virtual representations in an
> Internet-like structure. The term Internet of Things was proposed by
> Kevin Ashton in 2009.[1]

> [1] is http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?4986 by Ashton which
> begins:

> Jun 22, 2009—I could be wrong, but I'm fairly sure the phrase
> "Internet of Things" started life as the title of a presentation I
> made at Procter & Gamble (P&G) in 1999.

> And before explaining what he originally meant and still means by it,
> says:

> The fact that I was probably the first person to say "Internet of
> Things" doesn't give me any right to control how others use the
> phrase.

> Hugo

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