Web of Things (WoT)

The Internet of Things solves one problem and immediately creates another. IoT lets a person interact with many different devices over the Internet using a smartphone or computer, which effectively builds a personal network of things. But interaction happens through apps — and in practice, interacting with 'n' different devices means installing 'n' different apps, one per device. A home full of smart devices becomes a phone full of separate control panels.

The obvious question follows: would it not be far more convenient to have one single interface through which all the devices can be connected and handled?

The candidate for that single interface already exists — the web. The web is already in universal use as a system for people to communicate with each other. The Web of Things (WoT) asks whether the same web can be used so that all things communicate with each other in the most efficient manner, by integrating them together on it.

WoT, then, allows the use of web services to connect anything in the physical world, alongside the human identities that already live on the web. Where IoT puts devices on a network, WoT lifts the interaction layer onto the familiar, universal platform of the web, so that a bulb or a lock is addressed the way web resources are — through one interface rather than a scatter of separate apps.

• IoT: many devices online, but each typically demanding its own app — a fragmented experience.
• WoT: web services as the single, common doorway to all physical things. …