Cyber-physical-social-thinking space based science and technology framework for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) as an emerging network paradigm is bringing the next scientific and technological revolution for ubiquitous things’ interactions in cyber-physical-social spaces. The IoT influences the current science and technology system by enabling its relatively stable interrelations for an inevitable architecture reconfiguration. In this paper, we aim to explore an updated science and technology framework for the IoT. Particularly, a novel cyber-physical-social-thinking (CPST) space is established by involving an attractive concept of the Internet of Thinking (IoTk), and a science and technology framework is accordingly proposed referring to both scientific aspect (i.e., cyber-physical, social, and noetic sciences) and technological aspect (i.e., fundamental, physical, cyber, and social technologies). According to the perspective of the traditional Chinese culture, we explain the established science and technology framework, in which the “Five Elements” (i.e., wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) have common properties with the restructured cyber-physical science in the IoT. Moreover, we introduce a scenario of smart city to identify the technological aspect in the IoT, and discuss the key enabling technologies, including resource management, energy management, data management, session management, security and privacy, loop control, space-time consistency, nanotechnology, and quantum technology. It turns out that the established science and technology framework will launch an innovation for academia and industry communities.