Monitorology – the art of observing the world

We focus on the art of observing the world by electronic devices such as sensors and meters that, in general, we call monitors. We also define main monitoring objectives and pose five challenges for effective and efficient monitoring that still need a lot of research. In the era where compute power like electricity is easily available and easy to use across the globe, and big data is generated in enormous amounts at ever-increasing rates, the question, what to monitor and how, will become ever more relevant to save the world from flood of meaningless, dumb data, leading frequently to false conclusions and wrong decisions whose impact may range from a minor inconvenience to loss of lives and major disasters.