Having a deep fascination with The Internet of Things, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Phil Windley’s recent post, “Personal Event Networks: Building the Internet of Things,” and Drummond Reed’s commentary, “Phil Windley on Personal Event Networks.”

Phil concludes in his post, “An Internet of Things—social products and services—will have as profound an effect on our lives as the changes of the preceding 15 years. I believe that personalized event-driven programming models are a key part of the architecture that makes them real.”

In his post, Drummond states, “Many things become possible if your personal network of devices, products, and services can safely talk to each other in ways they can all understand. That’s what Phil is promoting through a simple event interface.”

It occurred to me that Identity is a key enabler – the Identities of People meeting the Identities of Things.  What transpires will be meaningful relationships between people and the things which provide services to them.  I like to think I already have meaningful relationships with things like my refrigerator and my car (I’m weird that way), but think such relationships can be significantly enhanced as the Internet of Things evolves.

I applaud the pioneering work of Drummond and Phil and others like them, who are working to bring about meaningful reality to these fascinating concepts.