Ubiquitous Computing: The Grand Vision

Jason I. Hong

Today’s 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

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

Next Big Thing

• One of the insights that led PARC to ubicomp:

Ubicomp Also a Reaction to Computing Trends at the Time

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

Ubicomp Influenced by Philosophy

• Martin Heidegger’s 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

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

Ubicomp TechnologiesTabs, Pads, Boards

Ubicomp TechnologiesTabs, Pads, Boards

• Physical scale matters– Inches

– Feet

– Yard

– Good reason not to switch to metric system?

Active Badges

• Identity + Room level location + Button

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

Some Characteristics of Ubicomp

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

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

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

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 newspaper’s 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?

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?

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”

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

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 other’s screen contents and location”– How to easily configure (an area of research for me)

– Would co-workers find this acceptable? Social conventions?

The Sal Story

• “A blank tab on Sal’s 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

Success of the Ubicomp Project

• Electronic whiteboards

• PDAs• Local Area Wireless networking• Active Badges

Stuff We Still Can’t Easily Do

• Location based services in general• Scoreboard – public display that shows custom

information depending on who’s there– Sports scores, news, etc

• Locating lost objects– RFIDs

• Deployment costs, robustness, economics

What’s Missing?

• Web– Notice no mention of the Internet, wasn’t 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

What’s 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?

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

• 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

Synthetic Serendipity

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

Another Vision of Ubicomp

• 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

Synthetic Serendipity

• Will wearable computers actually take off?– How to do input? How to avoid accidental input?

– Non visual output? Or heads up displays?

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?

Synthetic SerendipitySome Questions

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?`

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

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 isn’t?

• Too optimistic?– Viruses? Phishing? Hackers?– Will anytime access to info help or exacerbate overload?