NOTE: Problem Statement and Objective

What is the problem?

IoT leads to a sea of data and a sea of knobs. How can we find the specific data that we are interested in, the specific meaning of the information provided, the knobs we can use to generate a specific effect, and the specifics of the effect of a knob?

Example: Find the CO2 concentration in room X, find actuators that can control airflow, select actuators with respect to the extent of their effect on the CO2 concentration and with respect to their side effects.

Analogy: Capturing an alien space capsule and trying to make sense of all the indicators and actuators on its cockpit.

What are the objectives for the solution?

Humans can reason about web pages; the semantic information shall enable a machine to make the same kind of determination about what to do and how

This also includes the ability for humans to make their preferences known to the machines

Perspectives

System perspective: decouple from protocols and implementations; system can be robust against new variants of these

Modular construction, i.e., define abstractions for interaction patterns (not just properties, events, actions); shouldn't have to create a whole new application for each use

Semantics for data vs. high level semantics for things working/results of actions (e.g., HTTP 200, CoAP 2.05, MQTT [what?]) -- engineering principle: there should be a visible result (think: closure)