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9.1 Introduction 317
that actual implementations of the idea of middleware became widespread, as
Remote Method Invocation (RMI), dependent on Java as the coding language,
or Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). This middleware
advances suited fine for the electronic capabilities and expectations of computing
devices in the early 2000s, a time when computers had turned from one
single huge device that would be used by several people into machines closer
to a 1 computer: 1 person usage ratio.
Nevertheless, new developments on information technology were underway.
It was Mark Weiser the first person to define the term ubiquitous computing
back in 1988, and according to his perspective, tiny electronic devices
would be incorporated to the most common entities of a regular daily routine,
such as machinery, furniture or wearable pieces of garment. These tiny devices
would compose a smart grid so pervasive — or, to use another word with similar
connotations, ubiquitous — that the whole grid would merge with the
area it was deployed onto, being used and interacted in an unconscious manner
by human beings. In Mark Weiser ’s own words, “Ubiquitous computing
names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes,
each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing
era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop.
Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology
recedes into the background of our lives” [2, 3]. Another definition
from Mark Weiser for ubiquitous computing has been quoted by Judy York
and Parag C. Pendharkar deeming ubiquitous computing as “machines that fit
the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs” [4]. What
was also being foretold here was a shift from a computer-centric model, where
one computer would be used by at least one person, to a user-centric one, with
several computers surrounding a single person providing them information,
services and applications. Thus, the foundations of the Internet of Things (the
IoT) were established.
This new scenario does not negate the need for a middleware architecture.
If something, it has become even more pressuring than before, as devices and
protocols dependent and linked with the Internet of Things (mobile phones,
motes, 6LowPAN, etc.) offer a plethora of new issues that have hardly ever
been tackled in a combined fashion before. It has to be born in mind, though,
that the middleware solutions that proved to be useful are clumsy and obsolete
in the Internet of Things, mostly because they were conceived and designed at a