An Internet-of-things (IoT) mechanizes, computerizes, automates, instruments, includes, and connects a broadly dispersed and extensively diverse universe of unrelated “things” to the Internet, e.g., credit cards, home appliances, industrial machinery, airplanes, cars, municipal water pumps, mobile devices, rain gauges, etc. Each thing is assigned a resident local “smart agent”. Or an entity, manifesting remotely only as transaction records and reports, is assigned a virtual smart agent in a network server. These data structures follow, track, record, chart, monitor, characterize, describe, render, and otherwise provide a label and handle on independent things and entities.