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UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING
Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) integrates computation into the environment, rather than having computers which are distinct objects. Other terms for ubiquitous computing include pervasive computing, calm technology, things that think, everyware, and more recently, pervasive Internet. Promoters of this idea hope that embedding computation into the environment and everyday objects would enable people to interact with information-processing devices more naturally and casually than they currently do, and in ways that suit whatever location or context they find themselves in.
Ubicomp's central aim has been invisibility, meaning that one does not need to continually rationalize one's use of a ubicomp system. Having learnt about its use sufficiently well, one ceases to be aware of it. It is "literally visible, effectively invisible" in the same way that a skilled carpenter engaged in his work might use a hammer without consciously planning each swing. Similarly, when you look at a street sign, you absorb its information without consciously performing the act of reading.
[edit] History
The late Mark Weiser wrote what are considered some of the seminal papers in Ubiquitous Computing beginning in 1988 at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). This work quickly spread to Xerox EuroPARC, later called Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE). Weiser, Gold and Brown gave an account of the origins of ubicomp here.
In addition to computer science, Weiser was influenced by many fields. To quote from his ACM UIST keynote talk[1], he drew from "philosophy, phenomenology, anthropology, psychology, post-Modernism, sociology of science and feminist criticism", and he was explicit about “the humanistic origins of the ‘invisible’ ideal in post-modernist thought”. Also, he was influenced in a small way by the dystopian Philip K. Dick novel Ubik, which envisioned a future in which everything -- from doorknobs to toilet-paper holders, were intelligent and connected. Currently, the art is not as mature as Weiser hoped, but a considerable amount of development is taking place.
MIT has also carried on significant research in this field, particularly in Hiroshi Ishii's Things That Think consortium at the Media Lab and in the CSAIL effort known as Project Oxygen. Other major contributors include Georgia Tech, Microsoft Research, Intel Research and Equator.
More recently, American writer Adam Greenfield coined the term everyware to describe technologies of ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing, ambient informatics and tangible media. (The 2004 article All watched over by machines of loving grace contains the first use of the term.) Greenfield also used the term as the title of his book Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing (ISBN 0-321-38401-6). Greenfield describes the interaction paradigm of ubiquitous computing as "information processing dissolving in behavior," and uses the real-world example of the Hong Kong Octopus card system.
[edit] Examples
Debate continues over what are the most direct descendants of Mark Weiser's [2] "calm computing" concept include products from the company Ambient Devices, which has produced an "orb", a "dashboard", and a "weather beacon", devices that receive data from a wireless network and unobtrusively provide it to a person's peripheral attention, with a lighted globe (the orb) quietly signaling (e.g.) stock market movement, a similar lighted cube (the beacon) signaling weather, and a set of analog meters signaling a variety of user-configurable data.
Another example is the Datafountain[3], an internet enabled water fountain used to display money currency rates, created by Koert van Mensvoort. The heritage of these devices can be traced to a group of experimental devices created at Xerox PARC, notably Natalie Jeremijenko's "Live Wire," a simple piece of string attached to a stepper motor, itself attached to a simple integrator attached to the office LAN. When the LAN was busy, the motor would step, and the string would twitch, yielding a peripherally noticeable indication of network traffic. Weiser called this calm technology.
Some would consider GPS-equipped automobiles that give interactive driving directions or RFID store checkout systems to be examples of this kind of system, but these are far from the type of application that were imagined at either PARC or MIT. A more mundane example could be the mobile phone, which is so embedded in our everyday activity that it often (if not always) supports mobile interaction that is "literally visible, effectively invisible" in that when speaking to someone else far away we concentrate on the conversation rather than the device.
[edit] Current research
Ubiquitous computing encompasses wide range of research topics, including distributed computing, mobile computing, sensor networks, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence. Research labs are taking interest in developing this field are listed here.
[edit] Resources
Ubiquitous Projects
Some news sites are recording commercial and academic developments:
Notable conferences in the field include:
Magazines committed to pervasive computing:
Ubiquitous computing initiatives in education:
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- [4] Bibliography of Adam Greenfield's Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing
- Handheld Learning Forum Ubiquitous Computing in Education
- Datafountain Application of Calm technology
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