Too Much Left Out (Score 2, Insightful)

The description "The Smart Sensor Web" concentrates on 'plumbing', that is, just getting data. The description is too light on the rest that is needed for real usefulness.

The description appears to fall into an old trap, the promise that with all the data we have 'everything'. Yes, getting the data is usually necessary. However, the data alone is rarely sufficient and, thus, not yet 'everything'. So, we also need (1) dictionary of the data, that is, what data is where (e.g., what Google does for the Web), (2) descriptions of the data, e.g., as in XML, the older OSI CMIS/P ideas, and/or just natural language (the sensor web data will usually not be self-documenting -- there is a challenge here not faced by the Web), (3) what we are going to do with the data (we can't expect just to have humans read it), and (4) what the real and valuable applications are (not the news and entertainment of the Web).

The description did mention "intelligent" and "information layer", but it is here that the crucial issues are for power and value; thus, we need much more than just the simple mention.

Broadly we can compare with the Web -- TCP/IP with HTTP and HTML: The Web mostly presumes that the server is sending to a PC with a human reading a screen. So, the Web got to exploit the ability of humans to read screens.

For sensor webs to yield valuable results, we need some powerful automation of the data, need to replace the human reading a screen. There is value here but also challenges.

A guess: Too soon, we will want more than just 'sensors'. We will also want 'transducers' that let us 'control'. Also, we will need security, etc.