Nokia may not be inventors, but they are closer than most to enabling millions of people to benefit from the blockchain.

-By Josh Cotton, PhD, a Fortune 500 consultant, the Founder of VetStoreUSA, LLC., and a social scientist who has been studying the Blockchain Community since 2013 @BitcoinCensus

Data is the lifeblood of the world today and expect that trend to continue. From Netflix suggestions guiding your evenings, to Facebook ads disrupting your friends posts, to your watch that can warn you when your heart rate is too high, real-time data is shaping how we live our lives more and more.

Smart Cities

Applying the information age to how cities are run is a method that has come to be called Smart Cities. These are government and business backed efforts to help the cities we live in become more efficient, improving our lives, through real-time data. And if you have trouble remembering your passwords, just imagine the difficulty of managing thousands of digital parking meters, power plants supplying lifesaving care to hospitals, and traffic lights helping millions get to the office each day. Now throw in the Internet of Things (IoT), the desire to connect millions of devices and make sense of the data giant…wow! All of this data is amazing, it is exciting, the possibilities seem endless.

The data collection problem has been solved. Now the data connection problem has emerged. Enter: Nokia’s Sensing as a Service (S2aaS).

Sensing as a Service was not invented by Nokia. Its creation is credited to a group of researchers at Syracuse University and Arizona State University who were funded in part by a grants from the National Science Foundation to solve the data collection problem (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1217611&HistoricalAwards=false). These researchers first published the concept “Sensing as a Service” in a 2013 article that appeared in the IEEE Sensors Journal (http://optimization.asu.edu/papers/XUE-JNL-2013-Sensors-SaaS.pdf). But what Nokia has done, has taken Sensing as a Service, placed it on the blockchain, monetized it, and is attempting to use it to help cities today.

So what is Sensing as a Service?

The concept is simple. There are sensors everywhere, especially in our smart devices: our phones, wearables, our cars. With all these live data sensors traveling around our cities, what would happen if they all started communicating? Like a hive of bees making honey, or a flock of birds flying north for the summer, communication can take chaos and turn it into order. That is what Sensing as a Service is all about: communication. As noted by those original researchers in 2013, a barrier to adoption is the missing incentive to share all this data with others. Raise your hand if you feel excited about letting your smart phone talk to the government 24 hours a day. But Nokia has an idea.

Nokia’s Sensing as a Service and the Blockchain

Nokia understands the how well the blockchain works for payments and has integrated a blockchain based payment system into its new Sensing as a Service offering thereby enabling users to sell their data to whomever wants it. Nokia may have finally solved the incentive problem: “Our complete micropayment platform can help you quickly generate new revenue from your data. Based on Blockchain: the distributed ledger technology that is taking finance, healthcare, and a range of other industries by storm, our platform allows you to easily integrate third parties into your data market – expanding your customer base and service offerings.”

Nokia did not invent selling your data to consumers on the blockchain, they did not invent Sensing as a Service but they are bringing these two great ideas together to a city near you! The blockchain community is full of invention, the forging of new ideas, and new solutions. But the blockchain community sometimes forgets to focus on creativity, the combining of good ideas applied to a new setting to solve the original problems but for new people.

Nokia may not be inventors, but they are closer than most to enabling millions of people to benefit from the blockchain.