Ubiquitous Computing: The Grand Vision

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Ubiquitous Computing The Grand Vision

• Jason I. Hong

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Todays Papers

• Original vision of ubiquitous computing
• What they hoped to accomplish
• What they actually accomplished
• A sci-fi story describing what it might be like
  to live with ubicomp
• Stories as a way of doing a prototype without
  building it
• Has to be logically consistent and compelling

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Rewind Back to the Late 1980s

• Bad hair was popular
• Computers expensive
• Macintosh had just come out
• Before cell phones cheap
• Before Internet widespread
• PC was the only notion of a computer

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Next Big Thing

• One of the insights that led PARC to ubicomp

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Ubicomp Also a Reaction to Computing Trends at
the Time

• Personal Computer
• Laptops
• Dynabooks
• Knowledge Navigator
• Virtual Reality

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Ubicomp Influenced by Philosophy

• Martin Heideggers notion of Ready-to-hand vs
  Present-at-hand
• When the mouse is used to complete a task, it is
  an extension of your body
• When the mouse runs off the pad or the wire
  obstructs motion, it becomes consciously present
  as an artifact in use

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Ubicomp Influenced by Anthropologists

• From atoms to culture
• The most profound technologies are those that
  disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric
  of everyday life until they are indistinguishable
  from it.
• Technology effective when not consciously aware
• I talked to my brother on the phone the other
  day
• Driving a car

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Ubicomp TechnologiesTabs, Pads, Boards
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Ubicomp TechnologiesTabs, Pads, Boards

• Physical scale matters
• Inches
• Feet
• Yard
• Good reason not to switch to metric system?

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Active Badges

• Identity Room level location Button

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Active Badges

• Identity Room level location Button
• Relatively simple tech led to lots of apps
• Door opens only to right badge wearer (Bill
  Gates house)
• Rooms greet people by name
• Telephone calls automatically forwarded
• Computer terminal can quickly your settings
  (Teleporting)
• Automatic diary
• Having actual hardware let them experiment quickly

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Some Characteristics of Ubicomp

• Embed tech into the physical world (Colonizing)
• New devices leveraging familiar metaphors

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Some Characteristics of Ubicomp

• Embed tech into the physical world
• New devices leveraging familiar metaphors
• Push tech into the background, invisible
• Analogy to literacy
• Artificial intelligence not needed
• Context can be very powerful
• Automatic diary, auto door open, call forwarding
• Lots of very cheap displays (inch, foot, yard)
• Lots of new interaction techniques
• Waving, writing, walking into rooms

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The Sal Story

• Coffee?
• Coffee machine only knows Yes and No
• No other speech input devices nearby, or can
  ignore
• Coffee machine knows if it has coffee grounds
  inside
• She sees electronic trails that have been kept
  for her of neighbors coming and going
• Window has some computer vision
• Window can also display information

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The Sal Story

• She can see that her kids got up 15 and 20
  minutes ago
• No plausible deniability for kids anymore!
• Possibly sensors in bed, microphones in bedrooms,
  or location tracking
• She wipes her pen over the newspapers name,
  date, section and page number and then circles
  the quote. The pen sends a message to the paper,
  which transmits the quote to her office
• How does the pen know who to send to?

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The Sal Story

• Sal can press a code into the opener and the
  missing manual will find itself
• These days would probably be web based
• She spots a slowdown ahead and also notices on a
  side street the telltale green of a food shop
• Advertiser-based hardware? Install this and 10
  off price?
• Or somehow configure it? Configure lots of
  devices?

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The Sal Story

• Sal glances out her windows a gray day in
  Silicon Valley meanwhile it has been a quiet
  morning at the East Coast office

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The Sal Story

• The telltale by the door that Sal programmed
  her first day on the job is blinking fresh
  coffee
• End-user programming, how to do this in ubicomp?
• Coffee seems to be popular in Silicon Valley ?
• Fresh coffee also popular app at PARC

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The Sal Story

• Sal picks up a tab and waves it to her friend
  Joe
• Have to be careful of accidental data sharing
• How does it know what to share?
• How to differentiate if multiple people there?
• The two have given each other access to their
  location detectors and to each others screen
  contents and location
• How to easily configure (an area of research for
  me)
• Would co-workers find this acceptable? Social
  conventions?

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The Sal Story

• A blank tab on Sals desk beeps and displays the
  word Joe Joe wants to discuss a document with
  her, and now it shows up on the wall
• These days would probably be initiated via IM
• Easy to share data and talk real-time

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Success of the Ubicomp Project

• Electronic whiteboards
• PDAs
• Local Area Wireless networking
• Active Badges

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Stuff We Still Cant Easily Do

• Location based services in general
• Scoreboard public display that shows custom
  information depending on whos there
• Sports scores, news, etc
• Locating lost objects
• RFIDs
• Deployment costs, robustness, economics

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Whats Missing?

• Web
• Notice no mention of the Internet, wasnt obvious
  at time
• Makes the paper feel a little dated
• Subtle difference in vision original ubicomp
  about embedded chips in everything, web services
  about mass scale
• Social sciences
• Privacy
• Really compelling apps

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Whats Missing?

• Do laptops still have a future in ubicomp?
• Lots of devices and somehow your data gets to
  them
• Laptops still central, but can easily share data
• How do cell phones fit into the ubicomp picture?

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Famous Quote

• There is more information available at our
  fingertips during a walk in the woods than in any
  computer system, yet people find a walk among
  trees relaxing and computers frustrating.
• Machines that fit the human environment instead
  of forcing humans to enter theirs will make using
  a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the
  woods

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Synthetic Serendipity

• Vinge is well-known sci-fi writer
• Story set in year 2020
• Like a low-fidelity prototype
• Has to be plausible vision of future
• Combines lots of tech ideas
• Virtual reality
• Digital libraries
• Ubicomp
• Wearable computers
• Wireless
• Sensor nets

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Another Vision of Ubicomp

• We will reach a point where the combination of
  powerful processors, limitless data-storage
  capacity, ubiquitous sensor networks, and deeply
  embedded user interfaces will create a bond
  between human and machine so intimate that users
  may reasonably be considered superhumanly
  intelligent. - Vernor Vinge

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Synthetic Serendipity

• Some interesting points
• How Google, eBay, FedEx used in future
• Not real cyborgs, but close to it
• Real-time Google
• Silent messaging
• Information overlays on top of real world
• Pipes, nav arrows, online games in world
• Other services
• Real-world Tivo, Friends of Privacy
• Very much a male-oriented view of ubicomp

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Synthetic SerendipitySome Questions

• Will wearable computers actually take off?
• How to do input? How to avoid accidental input?
• Non visual output? Or heads up displays?

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Synthetic SerendipitySome Questions

• Will it be harder to differentiate reality?
• Live in reality or a world we created?
• A Matrix of our own making? World of Warcraft
  addiction?
• How to make cost-effective?
• Sensor nets not cheap
• Wearable computers not cheap, plus recharging
  needs
• Simple things we can do first?

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Break up into Four Groups

• Group 1, Group 2
• Machines that fit the human environment instead
  of forcing humans to enter theirs will make using
  a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the
  woods.
• Why are computers so frustrating?
• Simple things computers could do to achieve above
  goal?
• Group 3, Group 4
• The most profound technologies are those that
  disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric
  of everyday life until they are indistinguishable
  from it.
• What other technologies have disappeared?
• Can ubicomp achieve this goal? Simple ways to
  start?

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Signup Sheet

• Sign up for
• 1 lecture
• 1 note taking
• 1 more lecture or note taking
• (ie sign up for three things)
• If not enough slots, then share a lecture slot
  with someone

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Original Ubicomp VisionSome Questions

• Cost
• Very expensive infrastructure
• Cheaper, intermediate forms of ubicomp?
• How do things get pushed into background?
• Sort of assumes it will just happen
• Wireless email everywhere
• Understandability
• How to design so people can use things?
• What is active? What isnt?
• Too optimistic?
• Viruses? Phishing? Hackers?
• Will anytime access to info help or exacerbate
  overload?