The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of human-machine communication

6Christian Galinski The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of human-machine communication The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of humanmachine communication CHRISTIAN GALINSKI Infoterm (International Information Centre for Terminology) Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT), ‘things’, eApplications, ‘smart’ applications, unstructured and structured content, microcontent, interhuman (H2H) communication, information object, content object vs. content meaning, codings, non-verbal concept representations, content interoperability, metadata, masterdata, controlled language, controlled vocabulary, persons with disabilities (PwD), augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) 1. THe relATIonsHIP beTween InTerneT oF THInGs AnD ‘TermInoloGy’ or ‘sTruCTureD ConTenT’ This contribution aims at putting ‘content’ into perspective with Internet of Things (IoT) developments, achievements and challenges, its impacts on human society and of course on interhuman (H2H) communication which is increasingly supported by information and communication technologies (ICTs). Content can take many guises, such as texts, content in other modalities than spoken or written (e.g. other visual or acoustic signs and even information communicated in tactile or haptic form). with respect to content, the focus of this contribution is on structured content at the level of lexical semantics – also called ‘microcontent’. Terminologies are the most important kind of microcontent in specialized communication whether in spoken or written form. However, increasingly nonverbal modalities are necessary in spoken or written specialized communication, and are appearing even in terminological data. still in recent past, major topics related to computer technology were information and knowledge societies, digitalization (e.g. digital library), office automation, mechatronics and the like. Today’s buzzwords are Artificial Intelligence (AI), semantic web (semweb), big Data, cloud computing, robotics (referring to cyber-physical systems), Industry 4.0 – not to mention many aspects of industry and society carrying the attribute 7Terminologija | 2017 | 24 ‘smart’ in front, such as smart cities, smart transport, smart homes, smart hospitals, smart buildings etc. some of this ‘smartness’ is already implemented to quite an extent in the form of activities with an ‘e’ in front of it, such as ebusiness and eCommerce, eHealth, eGovernment, elearning, and new ‘eApplications’, such as eAccessibility and eInclusion, ebanking, eProcurement, eInvoicing, etc. Can any of the above be useful without content? The IoT has the potential of combining all technologies and applications mentioned above in one large cyber-universe where data – of course also in the form of ‘content’ – are created not only by and for humans, but also by (and for) ‘things’ which are increasingly used for purposes hitherto not imagined. Therefore, terms frequently used relating to the ICTs and the IoT in particular, do not yet represent stable concepts. so far, the focus of IoT developments is on technology, while the aspects of H2H communication – even, if ICT-supported – is largely neglected in pertinent literature. 2. DeFInITIons 2.1. The Internet of Things (IoT) IerC (http://www.internet-of-things-research.eu/about_iot.htm), the IoT european research Cluster, defines IoT as “a dynamic global network infrastructure with self-configuring capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual ‘things’ have identities, physical attributes and virtual personalities, use intelligent interfaces and are seamlessly integrated into the information network” (see Vermesan e.a. 2011). As a vision (with a certain degree of hype), early IoT conceptions may have been purely technology-oriented futuristic visions, but over the last couple of years more and more developments reveal increasing market relevance. It looks as if the IoT will dramatically change human environment – worldwide – over the next years with respect to traffic and transport, housing and living, health technology and services, developments in agriculture and food industry, education, communication, etc. However, the aspect of ‘content’ more often than not is omitted from the discussions about these technical developments. 8Christian Galinski The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of human-machine communication ITu (ITu-T y2060:2012, 3.2.2) defines the IoT as: “A global infrastructure for the information society, enabling advanced services by interconnecting (physical and virtual) things based on existing and evolving interoperable information and communication technologies. noTe 1 – Through the exploitation of identification, data capture, processing and communication capabilities, the IoT makes full use of things to offer services to all kinds of applications, whilst ensuring that security and privacy requirements are fulfilled. noTe 2 – From a broader perspective, the IoT can be perceived as a vision with technological and societal implications.” According to Dave evans (2011 – CIsCo Internet business solution Group, IbsG), the Internet doubles in size every 5.32 years. This somehow resembles moore’s law forecasting the number of transistors in highly integrated circuits (semiconductors) approximately doubling every two years. moore’s law ultimately resulted in the ‘miniaturization’ of electronic components – and thus the electronic devices built with these semiconductors became smaller while their functionalities were ever-increasing. The Internet’s growth just follows the need to transport the exponentially increasing amounts of data. According to D. evans (ibidem) under the IbsG’s technological and commercial perspective, the IoT simply is the point in time around 2008/2009 when more ‘physical things’ (such as electronic devices) were connected to the Internet than people. Today over 75% of world population is connected to the Internet in one way or other. Investigations show that the number of devices (especially electronic devices) connected to the Internet grew and continues to grow faster than that of humans connected to the Internet by means of computers or mobile phones. Thus, it could well be that already between 25bn and 50bn devices are connected to the Internet, today. This could never have happened without the rapid development of mobile technologies not only for ICT-supported H2H communication, but also for data retrieval and other use of data. In addition, other ‘physical things’ – such as surveillance cameras, sensors for all kinds of purposes in industry etc. – entered the scene as ‘originators’ of data. ericsson (2016) “conservatively” estimates the number of connected devices in the form of tangible facts at nearly 30bn in 2021, including only a bit more than 10bn devices for ICT-supported H2H communication. The latter 9Terminologija | 2017 | 24 number grows linearly while the number of devices for m2m communication grows much faster. D. evans (ibidem) “optimistically” estimates 50bn devices connected to the Internet. so far, the Internet arguably has not changed very much, fundamentally speaking. However, the IoT can be seen as the first real evolution of the Internet. It has already made the Internet sensory (temperature, pressure, vibration, light, moisture, stress), allowing us to become more proactive and less reactive. ITu (ITu-T y2060:2012, 6.1) states: “Through the exploitation of identification, data capture, processing and communication capabilities, the IoT makes full use of “things” to offer services to all kinds of applications, whilst ensuring that security and privacy requirements are fulfilled. noTe – The IoT is expected to greatly integrate leading technologies, such as technologies related to advanced machine-to-machine communication, autonomic networking, data mining and decision-making, security and privacy protection and cloud computing, with technologies for advanced sensing and actuation. As shown in Figure 1, the IoT adds the dimension “Any THInG communication” to the information and communication technologies (ICTs) which already provide “any TIme” and “any PlACe” communication.” This can be exemplified by the following graph: Figure 1: The extended dimensions of the IoT (ITU-T Y2060:2012, 6.1) 1 0 Christian Galinski The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of human-machine communication 2.2. The Internet vs. ‘internet’ There are – even among ICT experts – misconceptions about ‘internet’ as made explicit by unesCo (2017): “Internet: the worldwide public network of computer networks that provides access to a number of communication services including the world wide web (www) and carries e-mail, news, entertainment and data files. noTe 1: The Internet (with capital ‘I’) refers to the huge global public network which also runs the world wide web. other internets – also being networks of computer networks – are written with lower case ‘I’.” something similar also applies to the world wide web (www, also called web or The web) which can be described as (unesCo ibidem): “the most popular of all Internet services and applications (often used interchangeably with the Internet) that provides users with the ability – to access information and services while connected to the Internet, – to publish information, and – to offer services that can be accessed by anybody else in the Internet. noTe 1: The world wide web is one of the biggest services running on the Internet. The multitude of other services implemented over the Internet includes e-mail, file transfer, voice over IP (VoIP), digital TV, remote computer control, newsgroups, and online games. All of these services can be implemented on any internet, accessible to network users.” Today the Internet as well as the www are largely based on standards, first of all the Internet protocol suite comprising: /a/ “computer networking model and communication protocols combining numerous technical standards used in the Internet and other networks based on the Internet Protocol suite noTe 1: The Internet Protocol suite is the most important set of protocols of the Internet (collectively called Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol suite – TCP/IP) and allows large, geographically diverse networks of computers to communicate with each other quickly and economically over a variety of physical links. It is maintained and developed by the Internet engineering Task Force (IeTF).” (unesCo ibidem) The Internet Protocol (IP) can be described as: “main internetworking technical standard underlying the Internet that specifies how data is moved through it based on three principles: packetswitching, endto-end networking, and robustness noTe 1: The IP is implemented in two versions, IPv4 and IPv6 both based on technical standards of which different implementations exist. It is often 1 1Terminologija | 2017 | 24 used interchangeably to the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol suite (TCP/IP), although the IP covers the first – but still most important – networking protocols defined in the TCP/IP.” (unesCo ibidem) It is necessary to understand the differences between the Internet and the WWW – terms that are often used interchangeably. The Internet is the physical layer or physical network made up of switches, routers, and other equipment. Its primary function is to transport information from one point to another quickly, reliably, and securely. The www, on the other hand, is an application layer that operates on top of the Internet. Its primary role is to provide an interface that makes the information flowing across the Internet usable. Already quite early the www was called the “web of Things”. 2.3. What are ‘things’ in the IoT? ITu (ITu-T y.2060:2012, 3.2.3) defines ‘things’ as follows with regard to the IoT: “object of the physical world (physical things) or the information world (virtual things), which is capable of being identified and integrated into communication networks”. Things have associated information which can be static or dynamic. equalizing ‘things’ with ‘objects’ conforms to traditional science theory, especially ontology. In terminology science (based on science theory) ‘object of the physical world’ is also called ‘material object, (or physical object, real object, concrete object, and the like). In this connection ITu defines ‘devices’ as physical objects being /a/ “piece of equipment with the mandatory capabilities of communication and the optional capabilities of sensing, actuation, data capture, data storage and data processing”. In terminology science ‘virtual thing’ is called ‘immaterial object’ (or imagined object, abstract object, and the like). According to ITu virtual things “exist in the information world and are capable of being stored, processed and accessed. examples of virtual things include multimedia content and application software.” (ITu-T y.2060:2012, 6.1) This definition neglects the fact that ‘content’ – especially microcontent – is a universe of ‘virtual things’ in itself. Although software is 1 2 Christian Galinski The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of human-machine communication needed to handle it, serious interoperability issues arise, if content is put into the same category as ‘application software’ – not least due to the fact that content and software have totally different life-cycles and requirements concerning project management and quality aspects just to mention a few. besides, the philosophical question here is, whether all ‘things’ are only “information objects”, or whether they can be much more, if considered as (by humans) ‘perceived objects’ or individually ‘conceived objects’ in human reality. A radical reductionist view of everything being nothing else than ‘information objects’ from a technological point of view could turn out to be a big fallacy. Content can also be regarded as ‘things’ (see also sub-chapter 2.5). microcontent in terms of ‘content objects’ falls under ‘physical things’, the meanings of the content entities under ‘virtual things’. both necessitate metadata for their description and identification. 2.4. Interhuman communication ultimately any content has to be or must potentially be understood by humans. Interhuman (H2H) communication is unique for its extensive use of ‘language’ – in all its meanings from ‘langage’ via ‘langue’ to ‘parole’ in French, according to the ideas of Ferdinand de saussure. However, language and languages are not the only means of communication, neither is language only confined to spoken and written. The channels (or modalities) of interhuman communication can be visual, auditory, tactile (such as in braille) and haptic, olfactory, electromagnetic, or biochemical. besides, communication may take place at conscious and unconscious levels. Generally speaking, it can be defined as: “the act of conveying intended meanings from one entity or group to another through the use of mutually understood signs and semiotic rules”. (wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication) The essential elements of this definition from the perspective of H2H communication are: •intended meanings, •conveyed among humans (whether individuals or groups), •mutually understood signs/symbols and rules. 1 3Terminologija | 2017 | 24 others by comparison, emphasize the social interaction aspect: “Communication is the essence of human interaction and learning. The nature of communication is dependent on interaction between two or more individuals and understanding is constructed through that interaction”. (IsAAC – https://www.isaac-online.org/english/what-is-aac/what-is-communication/) IsAAC continues: “Communication is a basic human right and essential to our quality of life as a social species. As human beings, we use communication to: relate to others, socially connect, greet, call attention, share feelings, express an opinion, agree, disagree, explain, share information, question, answer, tease, bargain, negotiate, argue, manipulate, compliment, comment, protest, complain, describe, encourage, instruct, provide feedback, show humor, discuss interests, be polite, make friends, express interest or disinterest, etc.” For the above purposes and taking the social and interaction aspects of communication into account, non-verbal communication is well-known as major communicative means for supporting language in interhuman communication or even replacing it in certain communication acts. It is reckoned to represent two-thirds of all communication and involves conscious and unconscious processes of encoding and decoding (of meanings/messages conveyed). It can include visual cues, such as body language (e.g. postures), gestures and mimics, auditory cues of voice in speech (paralanguage), such as voice quality, rate, pitch, volume, speaking style, as well as prosodic features, such as rhythm, intonation and stress. needless to mention that much of this can be highly culture and language dependent. (see wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication) much of the study of nonverbal communication has focused on interaction between individuals, where it can be classified into three principal areas: environmental conditions where communication takes place, physical characteristics of the communicators, and behaviours of communicators during interaction. written communication – especially under a ‘localization’ (l10n) perspective, such as in translation and technical writing/documentation – can also have non-verbal elements: (a) linguistic ones, such as personal style, and (b) non-linguistic ones, such as photos, images, drawings, graphs, diagrams, embedded acoustic signs (e.g. in ebooks), etc. needless to mention, much of this may be highly culture and language dependent, and also even social group or language register dependent. 1 4 Christian Galinski The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of human-machine communication Taking the above-mentioned communication channels into consideration, the traditional definitions of H2H communication needs extension, as they largely focused on ‘language’ in a narrow sense. In the field of child raising and education, as well as in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for persons with communication disorders of different kind or origin, ‘language’ and H2H communication are used and must be used in a much broader sense. elearning tools and assistive technologies are taking this into account – thus often developing apps or tools which are useful for everybody. Increasingly all of the above-mentioned interhuman communication aspects can be supported by ICTs. ultimately ‘things’ in the IoT will or – if need arises – may even have to be presented to human beings. Therefore, negligence of the complexity of the nature of H2H communication will not only curb efficiency and effectiveness of the technologies applied, but also lead to problems of quality of information, liability for wrongly presented information (to certain target groups or in general), corporate social responsibility (Csr), legal responsibility of all sorts, etc. There is a series of standards which is based on a most comprehensive, though condensed combination of fundamental theories on interhuman communication and behaviour based on: ITu-T X.1081:2011 The telebiometric multimodal model – A framework for the specification of security and safety Aspects of telebiometrics. experts of H2H communication probably may not find the link to ITu-T X.1081:2011 and related standards, because the titles of these standards and the names of the committees that work on them seem to have no connection to H2H communication. experts of biometrics would hardly think of the H2H communication content and its semantic, social and cultural dimensions – unless these are in some way or other ‘computable’. Today, however, nearly everything in terms of interhuman communication is or is going to be ICT-supported anyhow. The ITu-T recommendation was followed up by IeC 80000-14:2014 Telebiometrics related to physiology as a part of the Iso and IeC 80000 harmonized series and ITu-T recommendation X.1082:2010 Telebiometrics related to human physiology. standardizing work on the Iso and IeC 80000 harmonized series is shared by Iso/TC 12 and IeC/TC 25 both named Quantities and units, while related topics are dealt with by several other committees in Iso/IeC-JTC 1 Information technology and Iso/TC 68 Financial services, as well as several other standards developing or- 2 1Terminologija | 2017 | 24 which have to be considered at the earliest stage of: •the software design process, and •mata modeling (including the definition of metadata), and hereafter throughout all the iterative development cycles. (mou/ mG 2012) “The above recommendation inevitably requires a higher degree of structural complexity, which has to be coped with by a higher degree of granularity of the data model. It may require additional urIs for the different language parts of the individual entries of structured content. ultimately the time-honoured principle of term autonomy will have to be extended towards representation autonomy in the field of terminology management. This is anyhow necessary when re-purposing entities of structured content for instance for elearning purposes. because of the paramount phenomena of quasi-equivalence of concepts between languages links between parts of entries or even certain fields in a given entry to other entries (or parts thereof) will be necessary. As experienced in localization (such as in the field of technical documentation), the above even applies to non-linguistic representations due to cultural diversity factors.” (Galinski & Giraldo Perez 2014: 415) 3.3. Metadata for content There are different metadata standards for each field of application (e.g. museum collections, digital audio files, websites, etc.). Describing the content and context of data or data files increases their usefulness. but from a content perspective – especially regarding structured content – it must be borne in mind that the set of metadata needed for structured content entities and unstructured content entities may be quite different, although they overlap to some extent: •In the case of unstructured content – considered to be a ‘content resource’ – the metadata comprise those related to: o the formal description and identification of each ‘content object’ (including source description and identification), o the data management of the ‘content objects’, o the knowledge-level of the ‘content object’, comprising §classification, typology, taxonomy, and similar means of categorization, §descriptors of documentation thesauri or other kinds of ‘controlled vocabularies’, §free indexing methods, (or a combination of the above); 2 2 Christian Galinski The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of human-machine communication •In the case of structured content – considered to be basic semantic entities – the metadata would comprise those related to: o the formal description and identification of each microcontent entity (including source description and identification), o the data management of the microcontent entity, o the knowledge-level of ‘microcontent objects’ similar to unstructured ones, o the ‘semantics’ of the microcontent entity, comprising §linguistic and non-linguistic information, §explanations or definitions or other kinds of denomination, §usage aspects of all sorts, §quality/reliability indications, etc. In addition, the sets of metadata for different kinds of resources of structured or unstructured content differ, although they usually have some metadata in common (e.g. information on the source). each kind of content has a specific minimum (but extendable) set of metadata which allows to process, use, reuse and re-purpose them. even if only slight differences between the metadata sets are not respected, interoperability issues may arise. In this connection, the complexity of a content entity in general may be determined in terms of: •quantity of information covered, •granularity of metadata applied, •amount of explicit context and co-text provided, •number of content types comprised, •degree of cognitive processing required, etc. The metadata applied – at least in the past – mostly refer to formal aspects, i.e. to syntactic structuring rather than ‘semantic structuring’. (see also: oAsIs s.a.) The more information on ‘meaning’ is required, the more metadata related to semantics are necessary – especially in microcontent of all sorts with explanations, definitions, underlying conceptual structures, etc. – such as for terminological data. The above is also supported by ben steichen & Vincent wade (2010: 5): “The heterogeneous support content that is available for software products needs to be transformed to a semantically richer form in order to allow reasoning, adaptation and personalisation across it. <…> semantic web technologies such as ontologies represent an opportunity to base such structuring and 2 3Terminologija | 2017 | 24 markup on. The different types of content can be broadly categorised by their amount of existing metadata and structure. Consequently, different types of usage can be drawn from each: whereas highly structured content (such as technical documentation) can be used to derive an ontology of the knowledge domain, unstructured content (such as forum posts) can be marked up in order to provide querying users with a larger range of problem solutions.” In this connection, a paradox has been pointed out by sabine Zumpe & warner esswein (2002: 246) referring to the fact that a high degree of structural complexity in the form of higher granularity represented by more (incl. more different kinds of) metadata in fact reduces complexity from the point of view of information processing: “Highly structured knowledge bases permit a low degree of complexity to be managed by the information system. In contrast the degree of complexity is very high in weakly structured knowledge bases, whereby the user does only need a small amount of information about the meta-structure.” The appropriate application of metadata approaches alone does not yet guarantee content interoperability. metadata came into use, when databases had to be designed. The original definition “data about data” (Iso 19115:2003, 4.8) can still be found in several standards. later definitions are: “data [information] that provides information about data” (merriamwebster) or “information about a resource” (Iso 19115-1:2014, 4.10). Different definitions of metadata abound. In order to apply ICTs for the handling and processing, as well as maintenance of any kind of microcontent, J. riley (2017: 6) distinguishes four types of metadata: •descriptive metadata (for indicating the role or function of the microcontent entity as well as search words/terms to facilitate the search for them), •administrative metadata (incl. technical metadata for decoding and rendering files, preservation metadata for long-term management of files, rights metadata for intellectual property rights attached to content), •structural metadata (relationships between microcontent entities, between elements of microcontent entities, different microcontent resources etc.), •markup languages and harmonized data modelling approaches (to support a consistent methodology with content interoperability in mind). 2 4 Christian Galinski The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of human-machine communication These various categories of metadata support different target uses in information systems. As can be seen, semantic aspects are mentioned, but only marginally. metadata can be stored and managed in a database, often called a metadata registry or metadata repository. However, without context and a point of reference, it might be impossible to identify metadata just by looking at it. (wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/metadata) As metadata description require metadata again, metadata as such are not different from general microcontent – only their distinct role or function for certain uses must be marked and respected. 3.4. Masterdata The increasing need for information interchange via the Internet called for standards harmonizing minimum sets of metadata for various eApplications, such as Dublin Core (today Iso 15836:2009) for libraries, or data categories for terminological data (Iso 16642:2003). In ebusiness and eCommerce such harmonized sets of metadata today are often called masterdata (e.g. referring to customer data, product data) which are also used to combine different kinds of data categories for certain transactions and additional metadata as well as factual data and related routines (e.g. price calculation), when needed. similar efforts are taking place in more and more standardization fields. Therefore, the number of new standards referring to content increases exponentially. These standards can refer to the standardization of: •microcontent entities as such (e.g. standardized terminologies, quantities and units, symbols of all sorts, codings of countries, harbours, airports, containers, currencies, etc.), •metadata pertaining to microcontent entities, •masterdata pertaining to objects of the physical world (physical things) or to the information world (virtual things), •links to respective metadata and master data registries or repositories. It has become a common conviction of experts in the field that “standardization of content reduces the complexity of business processes”. However, there are many standards and standardized approaches concerning metadata and masterdata in various eApplications which are a 2 5Terminologija | 2017 | 24 hindrance to ‘content interoperability’. Although harmonization efforts are under way, there is an urgent need for intensifying harmonization and enforcing it. In order to help to improve this situation, Infoterm in cooperation with the Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology in europe (AAATe) launched the “recommendation 2016 concerning standards on eAccessibility and eInclusion”. (see AnneX) 4. THe role oF sTAnDArDs 4.1. The nature of standards and standardization There are enormous differences in the degree of acceptancy of standards in various scientific and technical communities. For example, engineers and other technical experts consider standardization as the basis of efficiency, effectiveness and innovation in industry and trade. (eTsI 201709-03: http://www.etsi.org/standards/why-we-need-standards) “standards provide • Safety and reliability • Support of government policies and legislation • Interoperability* /see 4.3/ • Business benefits, such as: o open up market access; o Provide economies of scale; o encourage innovation; o Increase awareness of technical developments and initiatives. • Consumer choice Consider what the world would be without standards: • Products might not work as expected; • They may be of inferior quality; • They may be incompatible with other equipment – in fact they may not even connect with them; • In extreme cases, non-standardized products may be dangerous; • Customers would be restricted to one manufacturer or supplier; • manufacturers would be obliged to invent their own individual solutions to even the simplest needs, with limited opportunity to compete with others.” (eTsI ibidem) 2 6 Christian Galinski The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of human-machine communication eTsI concludes: “society needs standards”. From the point of view of engineers and technicians which is in fact true, however, not necessarily recognized nor acknowledged by other scientific quarters and people not familiar with standards. standardization takes place in a complex system: •official standardization bodies are developing ‘formal standards’ or ‘de jure standards’ at national, regional and international levels and there are established networking mechanisms among them; •other standards developing organizations (sDos) – especially those from industry – are developing ‘de facto standards’ or ‘industry standards’. Traditionally, the development of standards is closely connected to terminology standardization. many larger sDos have more than 100,000 standardized terminological entries in their databases, some several 100,000. Increasingly other kinds of microcontent is standardized, as already explained. In addition, there is quite a number of methodology standards about how to handle microcontent in its various forms. “recommendation 2016” (see AnneX) was prepared given the fact that the IoT cannot function efficiently and effectively without content and that standards are of great importance for ‘content interoperability’ in all its facets. 4.2. Technical standards, legal norms and certification “while ’legal norms issued by the state (or other kind of legal) authority are generally binding rules of conduct’, technical standards are identifying the state-of-the-art of scientific, technical or methodological development. only if they are referred to in a law or other legal regulation, they can become part of the respective legal norm.” (In lIFe D9.8 2017: 48) whereas legal norms are issued by a state (or other kind of legal) authority, technical standards are issued by standardizing bodies (or standardizing organizations or standards developing organizations, sDos) at international, regional or national level similar to the legal system. In some countries, standardizing bodies are national authorities whose technical standards are considered as legal norms. In european countries, standardizing bodies are operating formally in the private sector – usually based on a national law referring to technical standardization. To summarize: 2 7Terminologija | 2017 | 24 •standards are not in themselves [in the legal sense] regulatory in nature and their application normally is voluntary. Although standards are “only” [strong] recommendations, they are widely used due to the benefits they bring about and because they contain a concentration of qualified technical information. •standards only become [legally] mandatory, if they are referred to in private contracts or agreements, or in laws or regulations and their use is stated as a requirement. standards can prevent legal disputes, because they set out unambiguous specifications. •In reality, standards are taken – first of all in jurisdiction – as second to law. Certification – especially if it is based on standards – can lead to a powerful enforcement of standards. Certification can be applied to: •Products. •software/tools (e.g. with respect to interoperability). •Processes. •services. •Human resources: o personnel certification, o competences and skills. •Training: o training organization, o trainers, o training material and tools. Increasingly certification is also applied to content resources from the point of view of content quality and interoperability. This extends towards software and tools to manage content, pertinent services and other services reusing content resources, organizational requirements for managing content resources, and requirements concerning competences and skills of the human resources engaged in the management of content resources. Given the fact that some most important and societally as well as politically sensitive transversal aspects are far from being solved, legal and technical regulations will play an important role in the further development of the IoT. These aspects comprise in particular: security, privacy, safety, integrity, trust, dependability, transparency, anonymity, ethics and under a wider perspective also interoperability, energy consumption and cybercrime. (Vermesan & Friess 2014: 31) 2 8 Christian Galinski The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of human-machine communication 4.3. Standardization and interoperability The following statement referring to micro learning objects rather than ‘content’ in general still holds true: “There is a proliferation of web-based content platforms that offer users one or multiple resources on the one hand, and there is a lack of theoretical-methodological foundation on the one side and a lack of orientation at best practices of content interoperability on the other hand. /The fact that more and more resources are also created and maintained with often deficient web-based cooperative / participatory and distributed methods will further add to this proliferation./ Therefore, a combination of means, such as standards, appropriate software /information and communication technologies/, certification schemes etc.) is necessary to assure the quality – i.e. first of all reliability – of structured content.” (Galinski & Giraldo Perez: 2011) It has already been explained above that ‘technical interoperability’ may not guarantee ‘content interoperability’. Interoperability (Iop) in the quote from the eTsI Portal was obviously used in the narrow sense of ‘technical interoperability’. However, it is increasingly being recognized that semantic Iop has more dimensions than expected, and data quality strongly depends on content Iop. Data quality in turn heavily depends on the quality of the metadata, and content Iop largely depends on the interoperability of data models and ontologies (e.g. according to data quality monitoring project for open data ADeQuATe (2015)). Comparing standardized terminology entries on ‘interoperability’ one can find (technical) interoperability in the field of the ICTs defined as follows: “4.17 interoperability capability to communicate, execute programs, or transfer data among various functional units in a manner that requires the user to have little or no knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units” (Iso/Ts 19101-2:2008, 4.17). Increasingly this definition is recognized as being insufficient with respect to the user’s role as shown by: “3.11 interoperability degree or extent to which diverse environments (hardware and software) are able to exchange information without loss of content and in a manner transparent to the user” (Iso/Ts 22224:2009, 3.11). However, it was also recognized that technical interoperability may not be really interoperable without ‘organizational interoperability’ – and further ‘semantic interoperability’ (semIop) which is defined as: 2 9Terminologija | 2017 | 24 “2.34 semantic interoperability ability for data shared by systems to be understood at the level of fully defined domain concepts” (Iso 11354-2:2015, 2.34). In this connection, syntactic interoperability – which refers to the packaging and transmission mechanisms for data – is considered a prerequisite for semantic interoperability. (wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/semantic_interoperability) Programming practice, however, commonly considers only monolingual and mono-modal applications, which is certainly insufficient for coping with the various facets of interhuman communication. linguists would differentiate ‘semantic interoperability’ – still largely at lexical or vocabulary level – into: •lexical Iop (covering a certain degree of syntactic Iop in a linguistic sense), •conceptual Iop, •pragmatic Iop. In all the above, the interoperability of content/communication items in different modalities across systems and applications has not been sufficiently considered. ‘Content Iop’ is going a step further than ‘semantic Iop’ by covering (in the meaning of interhuman communication) lexical, conceptual and pragmatic interoperability. Iso/TC 37 “language and terminology” is focusing on ‘structured content at the level of lexical semantics’ which comprises terminologies and other language resources as well as non-linguistic/non-verbal resources of – what is called ‘microcontent’. The Committee recognizes non-linguistic/non-verbal resources of microcontent as important ‘other content resources’ (in the meaning of ‘other kinds of communication’ <at the level of lexical semantics>). Therefore, it uses the term ‘content Iop’ which goes beyond the ‘content interoperability’ as used in the ePub world (namely for the same layout as well as look and feel of content used through various reading devices, such as ebooks, readers, iPad etc.). Iso/TC 37 is becoming aware of the fact that it may have to embark on standardization activities concerning issues related to this broader concept of content Iop. The eu project universAAl (2012: 16-17) refers to further facets of interoperability including: •“Protocol Interoperability: The ability to share, bits and bytes over a network; 3 0 Christian Galinski The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of human-machine communication •service Interoperability: The ability to exchange messages in welldefined format; •Application Interoperability: The ability to interpret the exchanged data uniformity; •user Perceived Interoperability: The components of a system to communicate effectively, accurately and provide the services expected by the user.” “The four different classes are based on each other. Interoperability from the perspective of a human user will only be possible if the application systems and the applications used by him are interoperable. This in turn requires that the network services used by these applications to exchange messages, commands, files, images and sounds are interoperable. In addition, this requires that the actual exchange of raw data (“bits and bytes”) is interoperable, which is only possible if the electrical and electronic components (connectors and cables) or wireless components are.” In conjunction with the three forms of cooperation of systems: compatibility, interactions with de-facto standards and interoperability through standards, universAAl (2012: 15) pointed out: “For this, usually it is necessary that common norms and standards are observed.” The same applies also to content interoperability which – in terminology management – requires methodology standards related to •Data categories (not quite identical with metadata) used in the conceptual design of the entries of structured content; •Data models and data modeling methods; •Metamodels to make competing data models interoperable. These standards should be applied consistently and stringently – which requires that the methods they stipulate are interoperable. one can refer to this as ‘methodology Iop’ and even ‘standards Iop’. only then content Iop can be achieved – which also facilitates assuring the quality of microcontent. This means that we still need more standards – and “better” ones from the point of view of interoperability which is one of the prerequisites of sustainability in this field. The above also applies in particular to ‘controlled communication’. Today’s computers in terms of full-fledged semantic interoperability still cannot cope with the whole range of variations of language (viz. pragmatics – including ‘spontaneous variations’), even less, if interoperability is 3 7Terminologija | 2017 | 24 “decision makers in public as well as private frameworks, software developers, the content industry and developers of pertinent standards /should be/ aware that multilinguality, multimodality, eInclusion and eAccessibility need to be considered from the outset in software and content development. These considerations are required in order to avoid the need for additional or remedial engineering or redesign at the time of adaptation, which tend to be very costly and often prove to be impossible”. since 2010, hundreds of standards about eAccessibility and eInclusion were developed or revised by technical committees in standards organisations at international, european, or national level – not to mention many industry standards developed by other standards developing organisations (sDo). In addition, there are possibly thousands of standards that have a bearing on persons with disabilities (PwD). In particular, ‘accessibility’ in a broad sense rarely occurs in the title or in the body of these standards. “recommendation 2016” addresses critical issues identified in recent conferences, initiatives and projects dealing with eAccessibility and eInclusion and related topics concerning the difficulties faced by system developers, their customers, health care providers and end-users when trying to find and apply pertinent standards. The organizations endorsing recommendation 2016 call upon stakeholders of eAccessibility and eInclusion, in particular standards developing organizations (sDos) to: Ødevelop a more refined classification or keywording approach to identify content in standards with a bearing on eAccessibility and eInclusion Øregister the potential relevance for eAccessibility & eInclusion of an emerging standard right from the beginning of a standardization activity Øcross-reference standards having a bearing on eAccessibility and eInclusion Øencourage the formulation and use of consistent vocabulary / terminology Øimplement search functionalities that ease the use of standards Øfacilitate the active involvement of PwD as end-users in standardizing activities among others by providing standards documents in an ‘accessible’ format Implementing the above measures would enhance interoperability of eAccessibility&eInclusion related products and services and thus benefit users of standards and standardization at large. 3 8 Christian Galinski The Internet of Things – Hype and reality: Crucial issues about Internet of Things technology and ‘content’ of human-machine communication Recommendation: standards development processes and monitoring in conjunction with standards about eAccessibility and eInclusion and related aspects, should allow the coordination of standardizing activities across technical committees and sDos, leading to content coherence among standards about similar themes. This would help industry and other organizations to comply with standards’ requirements referring to corporate social responsibility and risk management, as well as with the latest legal regulations on accessibility in eProcurement and public websites. supportive measures may be worthwhile pursuing, to (a) promote certification schemes based on standards about eAccessibility and eInclusion, (b) encourage education and training activities regarding such standards, and (c) enhance the positive role that media (both institutional and social) and civil society can play here. online endorsement: aaate-endorsed-the-recommendation-2016-concerning-standards-on-eaccessibility-and-einclusion/ daIKTų INTerNeTas – lūKesčIaI Ir realybė: svarbIausIos daIKTų INTerNeTo TeChNologIjų problemos Ir žmogaus beI KompIuTerIo sąveIKos TurINys Daiktų internetui skirtų mokslinių tyrimų ir technologinės plėtros progresas labai spartus. Daiktų internetas gali technologiškai sujungti daugmaž visas elektroninių paslaugų teikimo sritis, įskaitant e. sveikatos, e. verslo ir prekybos, e. valdymo, net e. švietimo ir kitas paslaugas, o kur dar junginiais su žodžiu „išmanus“ ar „pažangus“ įvardijami projektai (tokie kaip išmanieji miestai, išmanusis transportas, išmaniosios ligoninės). Turint omenyje šiuos dalykus, vis labiau ryškėja žiūrėjimo į sąveikumą pirmiausia per technologijų prizmę (techninis sąveikumas), taip pat tam tikru mastu ir per semantikos prizmę (semantinis sąveikumas) trūkumai. Internetinių turinio platformų, vartotojams siūlančių vieną ar daugelį išteklių, gausa iš pirmo žvilgsnio atrodo pribloškianti. Atidžiau pažiūrėjus į šių išteklių turinio sąveikumą ir kokybę matyti, kad jiems dažnai trūksta teorinio-metodologinio pagrindo. Situacija tampa dar sudėtingesnė, kai turinys – ypač įvairių rūšių mikroturinys – yra kuriamas, prižiūrimas ir siejamas su kitu turiniu interneto naudojimu pagrįstais metodais. Kai daiktų interneto daiktų „sukurti“ duomenys turi būti interpretuojami, kad taptų informacija ir žiniomis, nebepakanka paprasto objektų (fizinio pasaulio objektų ar virtualių dalykų) identifikavimo ir žodinio ar nežodinio vardo priskyrimo, neatsižvelgiant į atitinkamas sąvokas. Kai daiktus turi atspindėti skirtingų kalbų žodžiai ar nežodiniai ženklai esant kitoms jutiminio suvokimo formoms, semantika turi remtis sąvokomis. Kaip viena pamatinė idėja ar sąvoka, pasiekiama per atskirą universalųjį adresą ar pastoviąją nuorodą, apibrėžtas mikroturinys apima daugelį įvairių turinio rūšių – galiausiai net joms apibūdinti naudojamus metaduomenis. Kyla klausimas, ar šios įvairios mikroturinio 3 9Terminologija | 2017 | 24 rūšys, įskaitant leksikografinius ir terminologinius duomenis (taip pat ir mokslines nomenklatūras), valdomuosius žodynus (tezaurus ir kitas žinių tvarkybos sistemas), žinių struktūrinimo sistemas (ontologijas, temų žemėlapius ir kt.) ir atitinkamus metaduomenis, gali būti plėtojamos ir valdomos, remiantis viena plačios aprėpties metodologija – terminologijos metodologija. Žinoma, reikia atsižvelgti į skirtingų mikroturinio rūšių skirtingus vaidmenis. Gauta 2017-09-07 Christian Galinski International Information Centre for Terminology (Infoterm) c/o Co-sPACe Gumpendorferstrasse 65/1, 1060 Vienna, Austria e-mail [email protected]