With the development of sensing, wireless communication, and Internet technologies, we are now living in a world that is filled with various smart things - the Internet of Things. This paper introduces and prospects an emerging research area - Embedded Intelligence (EI), which aims at revealing the individual behaviors, spatial contexts, as well as social patterns and urban dynamics by mining the digital traces left by people while interacting with Internet of Smart Things. The paper discusses the research history, characteristics, general architecture, major applications, and research issues of EI