Preface t the focus theme section.docVIP

Preface to the focus theme section: ‘Internet of things’ Elgar?Fleisch1, Sanjay?Sarma2 and Frédéric?Thiesse3? (1)?ITEM-HSG and D-MTEC, University of St. Gallen and ETH Zurich, Dufourstrasse 40a, 9000?St. Gallen, Switzerland (2)?Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA?02139–4307, USA (3)?ITEM-HSG, University of St. Gallen, Dufourstrasse 40a, 9000?St. Gallen, Switzerland Frédéric?ThiesseEmail:  HYPERLINK mailto:frederic.thiesse@unisg.ch frederic.thiesse@unisg.chPublished online: 16?July?2009 Without Abstract JEL??M00?-?O30 Introduction “Ubiquitous Computing” (Weiser  HYPERLINK /content/2228344971481827/fulltext.html \l CR13#CR13 1991,  HYPERLINK /content/2228344971481827/fulltext.html \l CR14#CR14 1993), “Pervasive Computing” (Satyanarayanan  HYPERLINK /content/2228344971481827/fulltext.html \l CR10#CR10 2001; Estrin et al.  HYPERLINK /content/2228344971481827/fulltext.html \l CR4#CR4 2002), “Things that think” (Gershenfeld  HYPERLINK /content/2228344971481827/fulltext.html \l CR8#CR8 1999), “Ambient Intelligence” (Aarts et al.  HYPERLINK /content/2228344971481827/fulltext.html \l CR1#CR1 2002), “Silent Commerce” (Ferguson  HYPERLINK /content/2228344971481827/fulltext.html \l CR5#CR5 2002)—a plethora of novel terms has evolved in recent years that propagate the coming of a new paradigm shift in information processing. Common to all these concepts is the shared vision of a future world of everyday physical objects equipped with digital logic, sensors, and networking capabilities, which together form a so-called “Internet of Things” (IoT). Whereas computing power was a scarce resource in the former times of mainframe computers and PC’s, the IoT bears the promise of omnipresent real-time access to information and services centred around arbitrary objects and users with their individual tasks and objectives. It is neither a single technology nor a specific functionality which is behind the