Document about an idea from around 2013 of Internet being a group of services, as alternative for seeing them as a group of things.

Idea

The idea about an Internet of Services is the opposite to the Internet of Things.

We are going to talk about the terms: Service and Thing to try to communicate the idea of the nearest concept to the area of interest of the Computer Science, where it is seen as a software application that gives a service, and differentiate it from the common and abstract term of thing.

Definitions

First, we are going to give some definitions.

Service

In the contexts of software architecture, service-orientation and service-oriented architecture, the term service refers to a software functionality, or a set of software functionalities (such as the retrieval of specified information or the execution of a set of operations) with a purpose that different clients can reuse for different purposes, together with the policies that should control its usage (based on the identity of the client requesting the service, for example). ServiceSystemsArchitecture2022

Thing (Object in philosophy)

An object is a philosophical term often used in contrast to the term subject. A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed. For modern philosophers like Descartes, consciousness is a state of cognition that includes the subject—which can never be doubted as only it can be the one who doubts—and some object(s) that may be considered as not having real or full existence or value independent of the subject who observes it. Metaphysical frameworks also differ in whether they consider objects existing independently of their properties and, if so, in what way. ObjectPhilosophy2023

How does fit all together?

We can begin with the concept of thing, that is defined in philosophy as something observed by an observer. And the term service is defined as a software functionality. With that, we can approach the definitions to our field of knowledge, the Computer Science.

The interesting thing is that we use, and think, in something as near to a software service as we can. Usually we do that in natural speaking, and we, for sure, refer to something related to functionality, not to something that can be observed.

I mean with that reflection that if we think in something that is usable or ‘serviceable’, we have the key to understand what we mean with Internet of Services, and we could use that term, or at least, think in that term, when we want to refer to the functional Internet.

Related standards and projects

There is a Web of Services standard in the W3C page.