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What's New In The High-Tech World

Ubiquitous Computing Or, How The Cheat Got Away

State of Computing Computing is rapidly changing Smaller, more efficient, more intelligent, better connected But we still use computers like we did in the 60’s Tools to accomplish a task Repository for knowledge Can computers be more?

Computers Should Not Be…

A New Age We are entering a new age of computing As more people begin to use computers Diversity of People Different Expectations Different Cultural Backgrounds As computing is applied to more problems Diversity of Problems

A New Age Need a new concept of a computer Question the ultimate purpose of computing Computing is quickly moving away from defense and academic environments Primary purpose is no longer finding artillery trajectories

What is Ubiquitous Computing The Philosophy that computing should be used to invisibly assist us Derived from the idea that computers should be (1) Useful, and (2) Useable

First Principles The purpose of a computer is to help you do something else The best computer is a quiet, invisible servant The more you can do by intuition the smarter you are; the computer should extend your unconscious Technology should create calm

Motivation Stupid Computers Where am I? What am I supposed to be doing? What tool do I use to accomplish that? Whoops, there is a problem, better ask the user…better yet, lets just die

Example of UC Philosophy Lifting Heavy Object Explicitly call an assistant Verses Made invisibly stronger

Common Misconceptions Handheld computers are not ubiquitous agents They do the work for us when we request it Ubiquitous agents should be there, invisibly, at all times

Examples of ‘UbiComp’ Devices PARC Tabs, Active Badges (GA Tech) Spaces Active Spaces – U Illinois

Devices – PARC Tabs Developed at PARC Initial experiment to measure viability of ubiquitous environment Handheld devices with stylus Networked within building

PARC Experiment (1988) In addition to Tabs, workstations were on the system, as well as electronic whiteboards and electronic notepads GOAL: To see how people would react to computers being embedded throughout their environment Limiting Factor: Used only in the PARC environment

PARC Experiment Conclusions It’s difficult to get people to accept new technology Would have been more successful if devices could be readily used inside and outside Wide variety of applications is important to users Shows that UbiComp is viable

Devices – Active Badges Worn on person Used to track personnel Used to authenticate Emits a unique infra-red signal every 10 seconds Receivers embedded throughout buildings Good for high security environments Obvious drawback: easy to steal

Spaces – Active Spaces All objects in our environment embedded with devices Each object communicates with others Each object changes their behavior based on the state of other objects

Active Spaces GAIA OS Supports an environment with many embedded devices that have knowledge of their location and context Maps the physical space into a computational space where particular properties are associated with particular physical spaces

Major Problems With UbiComp Power Consumption Our comfort zone Unwillingness to change technology Security Big Brother Do we want to be tracked? How do we prevent authorized attempts to store and access information about us

Conclusions As technology advances, UbiComp is become more and more viable This is as much a sociological study as it is technological

Some Final Words…