Smart Objects: An Active Big Data Approach

Abstract

The world of data and information has been steadily evolving due to changes in the expansion of complexity and of the data processed by our systems. Big Data has evolved from data that are numbers and characters conceived and collected by individuals, to unstructured data types collected by a variety of devices. Recent work has postulated that the Big Data evolutionary process is making a conceptual leap to incorporate intelligence.. This paper proposes that Big Data have not yet made a complete evolutionary leap, but rather that a new class of data - a higher level of abstraction is needed to understand and integrate this "intelligence" concept. This paper examines previous definitions, and offers a new definition for Smart Objects (SO) that extends this evolutionary path, examines the basic concept of smart data (is it really exhibiting properties associated with or purported to be intelligence?), and identifies issues and challenges associated with understanding Smart Objects as a new software paradigm. It concludes that Smart Objects incorporate new features and have different properties from passive and inert Big Data.