I am about to start a job in the field, so I have been doing some research. The best single source of (serious) information I found is Internet Society's IoT Overview.
I am singling out below some of the sections that add to this discussion - although I highly recommend a thorough read of the document.
The term “Internet of Things” (IoT) was first used in 1999 by British
technology pioneer Kevin Ashton to describe a system in which objects
in the physical world could be connected to the Internet by sensors.12
Ashton coined the term to illustrate the power of connecting
Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags13 used in corporate supply
chains to the Internet in order to count and track goods without the
need for human intervention. Today, the Internet of Things has become
a popular term for describing scenarios in which Internet connectivity
and computing capability extend to a variety of objects, devices,
sensors, and everyday items.
Varying definitions:
Despite the global buzz around the Internet of Things, there is no
single, universally accepted definition for the term. Different
definitions are used by various groups to describe or promote a
particular view of what IoT means and its most important attributes.
Some definitions specify the concept of the Internet or the Internet
Protocol (IP), while others, perhaps surprisingly, do not. For
example, consider the following definitions:
The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) begins RFC 7452,33
“Architectural Considerations in Smart Object Networking’’, with this
description: The term “Internet of Things” (IoT) denotes a trend where
a large number of embedded devices employ communication services
offered by the Internet protocols. Many of these devices, often called
“smart objects,’’ are not directly operated by humans, but exist as
components in buildings or vehicles, or are spread out in the
environment.
Within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the term “smart
object networking” is commonly used in reference to the Internet of
Things. In this context, “smart objects” are devices that typically
have significant constraints, such as limited power, memory, and
processing resources, or bandwidth.34 Work in the IETF is organized
around specific requirements to achieve network interoperability
between several types of smart objects.35 Published in 2012, the
International Telecommunication Union (ITU) ITU–T Recommendation
Y.2060, Overview of the Internet of things,36 discusses the concept of
interconnectivity, but does not specifically tie the IoT to the
Internet:
3.2.2 Internet of things (IoT): A global infrastructure for the information society, enabling advanced services by interconnecting
(physical and virtual) things based on existing and evolving
interoperable information and communication technologies. Note
1—Through the exploitation of identification, data capture, processing
and communication capabilities, the IoT makes full use of things to
offer services to all kinds of applications, whilst ensuring that
security and privacy requirements are fulfilled. Note 2—From a broader
perspective, the IoT can be perceived as a vision with technological
and societal implications. This definition in a call for papers for a
feature topic issue of IEEE Communications Magazine37 links the IoT
back to cloud services: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a framework in
which all things have a representation and a presence in the Internet.
More specifically, the Internet of Things aims at offering new
applications and services bridging the physical and virtual worlds, in
which Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications represents the baseline
communication that 16 What is the Internet of Things? enables the
interactions between Things and applications in the cloud. The Oxford
Dictionaries38 offers a concise definition that invokes the Internet
as an element of the IoT: Internet of things (noun): The
interconnection via the Internet of computing devices embedded in
everyday objects, enabling them to send and receive data.
Conclusion:
While the concept of combining computers, sensors, and networks to
monitor and control devices has been around for decades, the recent
confluence of key technologies and market trends is ushering in a new
reality for the “Internet of Things’’. IoT promises to usher in a
revolutionary, fully interconnected “smart” world, with relationships
between objects and their environment and objects and people becoming
more tightly intertwined. The prospect of the Internet of Things as a
ubiquitous array of devices bound to the Internet might fundamentally
change how people think about what it means to be “online”.