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Certainly a valid point. A very similar issue was raised by Mark Weiser in his article "The World is not a Desktop":
http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/ACMInteractions2.html

I was just at the Import Car Show in Tokyo and they had a Knight Rider style long black convertible with the red led in front. The cockpit was absolutely smattered with blinkelights of all proportions and colors.

Personally I liked messing with IIRC xsetleds though no need for it now. Perhaps you need to implement some calm technology instead... "If computers are everywhere they better stay out of the way, and that means designing them so that the people being shared by the computers remain serene and in control." (a serious technology not a joke)

What Jonathan is describing is the slow move towards ubiquitous computing that was put forward by Mark Weiser (the 'father' of ubicomp) in 1991.

But the move to ubicomp does not necessarily call for an end to the datacenter as we know it. The underlying systems that will make Weiser's vision a reality is the availability of computing devices that range from 'inches', 'feet' to 'yards' (mm, cm, m for us metric kids). What Weiser is saying here is that there isn't going to be one major form factor for computing (as was the case with the mainframe, the desktop PC and the laptop), but multiple form factors.

Some devices will be measured in inches and be able to perform a specific task, and others will be measured in feet and perform various other tasks and so on. And yes, all of these devices will be networked. However some devices will be better at certain things like sensing information and others better at things like processing the sensed information to make a decision. As a result, there will be room for the drill bits, the Disney dolls and the datacenter. And as pointed out by others, the networked world will likely require even more centralized computing.

Savio

You refer to Norman's The Invisible Computer, which is one of the best accounts of the ideas that started with Mark Weiser which he named Ubiquitous Computing.

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this 'Third Paradigm' computing.

Also see Wikipedia/Ubiquious Computing

I belive UbiComp is the next thing, and that the iPod, among other things such as TiVo:s and whatnot are the first signs of what is to come. UbiComp is not just entertainment applicances though, rather, it's an idea that computers need not be big machines that do lots of things, there doesn't need to be a computer at all, as such. Instead we can make computable things, that do one thing, and does it well. Computers don't have to look like computers, they can be invisible, inside the thing. It's the logical next step: mecanical -> electronic -> computable.

/Theo, Interaction designer (a field of human Computer Interaction, which also incorporates Ubiquituos Computing)

They try to draw a parallel to VM technology from IBM, it seem to me that the most likely to be successful implementations of Ubiquitous Computing environment won't involve any VM-like architecture.

I think it will just have a bunch of web-deliverable apps and it will save all your data and the state of any running web delivered apps so that you can start down at any computer, whether it was part of the "Ubiquitous Computing World" before or not, open a web browser, enter a userid and passphrase for your pki key and the apps, your data and the state you left everything in will pop up on that machine. Copyright 2004, TM (R), SM and Patent Pending... by 26377731333

Since Palm copied the Palm form factor and most of the technology used in the Palm from others, it would be kind of tasteless for them to sue anybody over making Palm-like devices. Mind you, not unprecedented, just tasteless.

What you are talking about sounds a lot likeubiquitous computing, pioneered by Mark Weiser. I think this is a few more years down the road. First will come the more stylish computers that still look basically like computers of today, then the radical redesign of cases and accesories to new form factors, then the cases just disappear and all you ever see is the I/O like you say.

Two top-class papers if you want to take a look to the "emerging" world of pervasive computing

Mark Weiser, The Computer for the Twenty-First Century (the most referenced paper in the subject)

Frank Stajano, Security for whom? The shifting security assumptions of pervasive computing (dangers of ubiquitous computing exposed)

• As We May Think, by Vannevar Bush. Bush was the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, basically the precursor to NSF and DARPA. In this magazine article, he observed the problem of disseminating information, and noted that electronics may be a better medium (keep in mind that this was written in 1945). He also outlines what he calls the Memex, the first description of a hypertext machine. Bush's theme is that we need to create devices that will make it easier for us to store and access information, and ultimately solve problems better.
• Sketchpad, by Ivan Sutherland. Couldn't find a link to a video, but this truly is one of the seminal papers in computer science. This paper introduced the first graphical user interface (graphical as in graphics, not windows and mouse), the first object-oriented system, the first zooming interface, and the first constraint solver. Best quote:

  "I once asked Ivan, 'How is it possible for you to have invented computer graphics, done the first object oriented software system and the first real time constraint solver all by yourself in one year?" And he said "I didn't know it was hard." -- Alan Kay on Ivan Sutherland.

  The embarassing part is that, although this was done in the early 1960's, Sketchpad still looks cool and useful today.
• Doug Engelbart's 1968 Demo. The link points to a video collection, which is easier to read than his papers. Engelbart is not the most exciting speaker, but keep in mind that in 1968 that people were still stuck using terminals and punchcards. What does he show them? The first mouse. The first hypertext implementation. The first use of video-conferencing. The first online help system. The first interactive word processor. Obviously a mind-blowing experience if you were there. As many people have said, this is the mother of all demos, and we still have not achieved many of his visions today.
• The Computer for the Twenty-First Century by Mark Weiser. Although this was written in 1991, I think that this might be the most important paper of the 1990s. Why? Keep in mind that in 1991, people were still using desktop PCs, that wireless had not achieved momentum, and that sensors were very few and far between.

  So what is the basic idea? That computers should not be constrained to the physical desktop, but should become an everyday and seamless part of our lives. And in this paper, Weiser and his team at Xerox PARC introduced location-based computing; devices of all form factors, from small PDAs to tablet PCs to electronic whiteboards; sensors for integrating the physical and virtual worlds; wireless networking to make it all connected no matter where you were (in their office building anyway). Weiser's vision is so influential, that there are now (literally) thousands of researchers working on what he called ubiquitous computing, as well as several research conferences devoted to this theme, not to mention the direction that the commercial world has already taken with PDAs, WiFi, sensor networks, and so on.

The opening paragraph is homage to "Computing for the 21st Century" by Mark Weiser. He is the inventer of the term "Ubiquitous Computing".

Will totally transform the way we use the Internet. Right now people's opinions are fragmented with regards to its import, but I believe that's because it's still a relatively esoteric medium. It's not hard to use, but it does demand a certain mindset, a "computer" mindset, in that you have to sit down at a flashing box with arcane input devices in order to access it -- this is something that intimidates a lot of people.

However, the way things are going, it's pretty clear that computers will eventually become a way of life rather than a part of it. Once IT successfully migrates into the background of our environment, and digital interactions are inherent in all interactions, the Internet will become an essential tool for the seamless and transparent communication and presentation of abitrary information.

Many other people call this augmented reality, but Steve Mann thinks that of the useful functions of the system would be to screen out advitisements, hence "diminished" as well as "augmented" reality forms "enhanced visions."

One unfortunate thing is that it can be hard to get by when one's enhanced vison is suddenly removed, as Mr. Mann's recent troubles show.

I'd also like to note that ideas about augmented reality are pretty central to ubiquitous computing.

Look towards the end of this paper. It describes that "dangling string network monitor".

Well, its semi-novel. It's all based on Mark Weiser's ideas and calm computing. There is quite a good intro at Calm computing.

Specifically this is an example of moving intrusive information (visual report of a network connection) into the periphery. One of the classical examples is the dangling string which this is an obvious reinvention of, although the dangling string is a lot cooler and would be more useful in a surgery setting.

Lots of previous posters have already pointed out that what you really need is quality of service but this is nice as if it gets a bit 'weird' eg laggy then you can look up (or listen) and get feedback that it is the network and not the system playing up. Useful reassurance...

It is the perSUasive not "pervasive" computing lab.

Persuasive tech is about "psychosocially active" computing (and other) technologies, ie. that affect motivation, persuasion etc. The paradigmatic example is "Baby think it over", the doll given to teens to make them think twice about getting pregnant. (There's even a special "crack baby" model I think.)

But in the last couple of years BJ Fogg (the guy behind persuasive tech) has completely focused on web trust, which is a lot less interesting than the original program IMHO.

Pervasive computing, in contrast, is another term (originally IBM:s I think) for Ubiquitous Computing. Something quite different in fact.

www.research.ibm.com/thinkresearch/pervasive.shtml
www.computer.org/pervasive/

I'm applying to Virginia Tech's grad school in computer science, and they have a HCI program. I'm not really interested in software design, but stuff more along the lines of ubiquitous computing and other projects that break the "computer is the tool and master" notion. Is this the type of thing that is addressed in HCI programs, or are they more of a sophisticated study of where the "Ok" button should go and how to magnify the screen for vision impaired people? Both? Neither?

To me, that does not sound like a dream home, it sounds more like Ubiquitous version of the dream house featured in the movie Cube.

• We live in physical space and can be much more expressive in it
• Computers need to learn how to integrate into human social contexts (which are physical),rather than humans squeezing into computer models of interaction
• Comptuers currently demand direct physical attention through keyboards, mice, and monitors "chaining" us to our desks. Physical interfaces should make computers transparently integrated into our environment; especially important for engineering professions, construction work, etc.
• Physical computing is more adaptable to people with disabilities, since it's goal is to express information with more physical senses.
• The GUI's already been done and I need a research grant ;)

The article in Scientific American you saw "like a bajzillion eons ago" was probably the one written about the research at Xerox PARC by Mark Weiser, "The Computer for the Twenty-First Century," Scientific American, pp. 94-10, September 1991.

Parc Place was a Xerox PARC spinoff, that made a commercial product out of Smalltalk, which was originally developed at Xerox PARC long before Mark ran the lab. As far as I know, Parc Place didn't have much to do with Ubiquitous Computing -- they just sold a version of the SmallTalk programming language.

Speaking of pioneering influential Xerox PARC research, has anyone else noticed the striking similarities between Microsoft's ".NET" and Xerox PARC's "Portable Common Runtime"?

-Don

The article in Scientific American you saw "like a bajzillion eons ago" was probably the one written about the research at Xerox PARC by Mark Weiser, "The Computer for the Twenty-First Century," Scientific American, pp. 94-10, September 1991.

Parc Place was a Xerox PARC spinoff, that made a commercial product out of Smalltalk, which was originally developed at Xerox PARC long before Mark ran the lab. As far as I know, Parc Place didn't have much to do with Ubiquitous Computing -- they just sold a version of the SmallTalk programming language.

Speaking of pioneering influential Xerox PARC research, has anyone else noticed the striking similarities between Microsoft's ".NET" and Xerox PARC's "Portable Common Runtime"?

-Don

The trivial, uninteresting detail that the system is currently implemented by a "dramatic" machine, a Beowulf cluster of Linux computers, hidden away in a server room somewhere out of sight, is the least important thing about the research, and totally misses the point.

But it's just fashionible to mention Linux in a newspaper article like that, to wind up the anti-microsoft kids, so you get slashdotted with lots of free publicity. Otherwise, slashdot would never carry an article about Ubiquitous Computing that didn't mention Linux.

Mark Weiser wrote the following definition of Ubiquitous Computing in 1988:

For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. (I have also called this notion "Ubiquitous Computing", and have placed its origins in post-modernism.) I believe that in the next twenty years the second path will come to dominate. But this will not be easy; very little of our current systems infrastructure will survive. We have been building versions of the infrastructure-to-come at PARC for the past four years, in the form of inch-, foot-, and yard-sized computers we call Tabs, Pads, and Boards. Our prototypes have sometimes succeeded, but more often failed to be invisible. From what we have learned, we are now explorting some new directions for ubicomp, including the famous "dangling string" display.

-Mark Weiser

====

-Don

There is much talk today about "thin clients," meaning lightweight Internet access devices costing only a few hundred dollars. But Ubiquitous Computing will see the creation of thin servers, costing only tens of dollars or less, that put a full Internet server into every household appliance and piece of office equipment. The next generation Internet protocol, IPv6[5], can address more than a thousand devices for every atom on the earth's surface[6]. We will need them all.

====

-Don

Author: Jim Harris
Posted: 11/6/2000; 4:57:21 PM
Topic: Calm Technology

[Illustration of the Dangling String display]

Calm Technology is what I call the goal of creating technology that truly honors the full model of human beings. I like this name because it begins with a word, "calm", that points us inward to the domain where we are truly human, and only secondarily mentions technology. Unlike ubiquitous computing, calm technology does not name a method, but a goal. Calm technology stands in sharp contrast to the enfranticing PC of today.

More from Mark Weiser.

Weiser comments on Dangling String: "Created by artist Natalie Jeremijenko, the "Dangling String" is an 8 foot piece of plastic spaghetti that hangs from a small electric motor mounted in the ceiling. The motor is electrically connected to a nearby Ethernet cable, so that each bit of information that goes past causes a tiny twitch of the motor. A very busy network causes a madly whirling string with a characteristic noise; a quiet network causes only a small twitch every few seconds. Placed in an unused corner of a hallway, the long string is visible and audible from many offices without being obtrusive."

Check out The Coming of Age of Calm Technology, by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown.

========

-Don

Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.

Mark Weiser is the father of ubiquitous computing; his web page contains links to many papers on the topic.

Two recent papers express elements of the ubiquitous computing philosophy: "Open House" (also in a MS Word version) , and "Designing Calm Technology".

What Ubiquitous Computing Isn't

Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences.

Early work in Ubiquitous Computing The initial incarnation of ubiquitous computing was in the form of "tabs", "pads", and "boards" built at Xerox PARC, 1988-1994. Several papers describe this work, and there are web pages for the Tabs and for the Boards (which are a commercial product now):

Ubicomp helped kick off the recent boom in mobile computing research, although it is not the same thing as mobile computing, nor a superset nor a subset.

Ubiquitous Computing has roots in many aspects of computing. In its current form, it was first articulated by Mark Weiser in 1988 at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC. He describes it like this:

Early Work in Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous Computing #1

Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.

Ubiquitous Computing #2

For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. (I have also called this notion "Ubiquitous Computing", and have placed its origins in post-modernism.) I believe that in the next twenty years the second path will come to dominate. But this will not be easy; very little of our current systems infrastructure will survive. We have been building versions of the infrastructure-to-come at PARC for the past four years, in the form of inch-, foot-, and yard-sized computers we call Tabs, Pads, and Boards. Our prototypes have sometimes succeeded, but more often failed to be invisible. From what we have learned, we are now explorting some new directions for ubicomp, including the famous "dangling string" display.

========

"Dedicated to the memory of Mark Weiser and Alan Turing"

-Don

Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.

Mark Weiser is the father of ubiquitous computing; his web page contains links to many papers on the topic.

Two recent papers express elements of the ubiquitous computing philosophy: "Open House" (also in a MS Word version) , and "Designing Calm Technology".

What Ubiquitous Computing Isn't

Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences.

Early work in Ubiquitous Computing The initial incarnation of ubiquitous computing was in the form of "tabs", "pads", and "boards" built at Xerox PARC, 1988-1994. Several papers describe this work, and there are web pages for the Tabs and for the Boards (which are a commercial product now):

Ubicomp helped kick off the recent boom in mobile computing research, although it is not the same thing as mobile computing, nor a superset nor a subset.

Ubiquitous Computing has roots in many aspects of computing. In its current form, it was first articulated by Mark Weiser in 1988 at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC. He describes it like this:

Early Work in Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous Computing #1

Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.

Ubiquitous Computing #2

For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. (I have also called this notion "Ubiquitous Computing", and have placed its origins in post-modernism.) I believe that in the next twenty years the second path will come to dominate. But this will not be easy; very little of our current systems infrastructure will survive. We have been building versions of the infrastructure-to-come at PARC for the past four years, in the form of inch-, foot-, and yard-sized computers we call Tabs, Pads, and Boards. Our prototypes have sometimes succeeded, but more often failed to be invisible. From what we have learned, we are now explorting some new directions for ubicomp, including the famous "dangling string" display.

========

"Dedicated to the memory of Mark Weiser and Alan Turing"

-Don

Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.

Mark Weiser is the father of ubiquitous computing; his web page contains links to many papers on the topic.

Two recent papers express elements of the ubiquitous computing philosophy: "Open House" (also in a MS Word version) , and "Designing Calm Technology".

What Ubiquitous Computing Isn't

Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences.

Early work in Ubiquitous Computing The initial incarnation of ubiquitous computing was in the form of "tabs", "pads", and "boards" built at Xerox PARC, 1988-1994. Several papers describe this work, and there are web pages for the Tabs and for the Boards (which are a commercial product now):

Ubicomp helped kick off the recent boom in mobile computing research, although it is not the same thing as mobile computing, nor a superset nor a subset.

Ubiquitous Computing has roots in many aspects of computing. In its current form, it was first articulated by Mark Weiser in 1988 at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC. He describes it like this:

Early Work in Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous Computing #1

Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.

Ubiquitous Computing #2

For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. (I have also called this notion "Ubiquitous Computing", and have placed its origins in post-modernism.) I believe that in the next twenty years the second path will come to dominate. But this will not be easy; very little of our current systems infrastructure will survive. We have been building versions of the infrastructure-to-come at PARC for the past four years, in the form of inch-, foot-, and yard-sized computers we call Tabs, Pads, and Boards. Our prototypes have sometimes succeeded, but more often failed to be invisible. From what we have learned, we are now explorting some new directions for ubicomp, including the famous "dangling string" display.

========

"Dedicated to the memory of Mark Weiser and Alan Turing"

-Don

Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.

Mark Weiser is the father of ubiquitous computing; his web page contains links to many papers on the topic.

Two recent papers express elements of the ubiquitous computing philosophy: "Open House" (also in a MS Word version) , and "Designing Calm Technology".

What Ubiquitous Computing Isn't

Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences.

Early work in Ubiquitous Computing The initial incarnation of ubiquitous computing was in the form of "tabs", "pads", and "boards" built at Xerox PARC, 1988-1994. Several papers describe this work, and there are web pages for the Tabs and for the Boards (which are a commercial product now):

Ubicomp helped kick off the recent boom in mobile computing research, although it is not the same thing as mobile computing, nor a superset nor a subset.

Ubiquitous Computing has roots in many aspects of computing. In its current form, it was first articulated by Mark Weiser in 1988 at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC. He describes it like this:

Early Work in Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous Computing #1

Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.

Ubiquitous Computing #2

For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. (I have also called this notion "Ubiquitous Computing", and have placed its origins in post-modernism.) I believe that in the next twenty years the second path will come to dominate. But this will not be easy; very little of our current systems infrastructure will survive. We have been building versions of the infrastructure-to-come at PARC for the past four years, in the form of inch-, foot-, and yard-sized computers we call Tabs, Pads, and Boards. Our prototypes have sometimes succeeded, but more often failed to be invisible. From what we have learned, we are now explorting some new directions for ubicomp, including the famous "dangling string" display.

========

"Dedicated to the memory of Mark Weiser and Alan Turing"

-Don

Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.

Mark Weiser is the father of ubiquitous computing; his web page contains links to many papers on the topic.

Two recent papers express elements of the ubiquitous computing philosophy: "Open House" (also in a MS Word version) , and "Designing Calm Technology".

What Ubiquitous Computing Isn't

Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences.

Early work in Ubiquitous Computing The initial incarnation of ubiquitous computing was in the form of "tabs", "pads", and "boards" built at Xerox PARC, 1988-1994. Several papers describe this work, and there are web pages for the Tabs and for the Boards (which are a commercial product now):

Ubicomp helped kick off the recent boom in mobile computing research, although it is not the same thing as mobile computing, nor a superset nor a subset.

Ubiquitous Computing has roots in many aspects of computing. In its current form, it was first articulated by Mark Weiser in 1988 at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC. He describes it like this:

Early Work in Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous Computing #1

Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.

Ubiquitous Computing #2

For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. (I have also called this notion "Ubiquitous Computing", and have placed its origins in post-modernism.) I believe that in the next twenty years the second path will come to dominate. But this will not be easy; very little of our current systems infrastructure will survive. We have been building versions of the infrastructure-to-come at PARC for the past four years, in the form of inch-, foot-, and yard-sized computers we call Tabs, Pads, and Boards. Our prototypes have sometimes succeeded, but more often failed to be invisible. From what we have learned, we are now explorting some new directions for ubicomp, including the famous "dangling string" display.

========

"Dedicated to the memory of Mark Weiser and Alan Turing"

-Don

Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.

Mark Weiser is the father of ubiquitous computing; his web page contains links to many papers on the topic.

Two recent papers express elements of the ubiquitous computing philosophy: "Open House" (also in a MS Word version) , and "Designing Calm Technology".

What Ubiquitous Computing Isn't

Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences.

Early work in Ubiquitous Computing The initial incarnation of ubiquitous computing was in the form of "tabs", "pads", and "boards" built at Xerox PARC, 1988-1994. Several papers describe this work, and there are web pages for the Tabs and for the Boards (which are a commercial product now):

Ubicomp helped kick off the recent boom in mobile computing research, although it is not the same thing as mobile computing, nor a superset nor a subset.

Ubiquitous Computing has roots in many aspects of computing. In its current form, it was first articulated by Mark Weiser in 1988 at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC. He describes it like this:

Early Work in Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous Computing #1

Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.

Ubiquitous Computing #2

For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. (I have also called this notion "Ubiquitous Computing", and have placed its origins in post-modernism.) I believe that in the next twenty years the second path will come to dominate. But this will not be easy; very little of our current systems infrastructure will survive. We have been building versions of the infrastructure-to-come at PARC for the past four years, in the form of inch-, foot-, and yard-sized computers we call Tabs, Pads, and Boards. Our prototypes have sometimes succeeded, but more often failed to be invisible. From what we have learned, we are now explorting some new directions for ubicomp, including the famous "dangling string" display.

========

"Dedicated to the memory of Mark Weiser and Alan Turing"

-Don

Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.

Mark Weiser is the father of ubiquitous computing; his web page contains links to many papers on the topic.

Two recent papers express elements of the ubiquitous computing philosophy: "Open House" (also in a MS Word version) , and "Designing Calm Technology".

What Ubiquitous Computing Isn't

Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences.

Early work in Ubiquitous Computing The initial incarnation of ubiquitous computing was in the form of "tabs", "pads", and "boards" built at Xerox PARC, 1988-1994. Several papers describe this work, and there are web pages for the Tabs and for the Boards (which are a commercial product now):

Ubicomp helped kick off the recent boom in mobile computing research, although it is not the same thing as mobile computing, nor a superset nor a subset.

Ubiquitous Computing has roots in many aspects of computing. In its current form, it was first articulated by Mark Weiser in 1988 at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC. He describes it like this:

Early Work in Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous Computing #1

Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.

Ubiquitous Computing #2

For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. (I have also called this notion "Ubiquitous Computing", and have placed its origins in post-modernism.) I believe that in the next twenty years the second path will come to dominate. But this will not be easy; very little of our current systems infrastructure will survive. We have been building versions of the infrastructure-to-come at PARC for the past four years, in the form of inch-, foot-, and yard-sized computers we call Tabs, Pads, and Boards. Our prototypes have sometimes succeeded, but more often failed to be invisible. From what we have learned, we are now explorting some new directions for ubicomp, including the famous "dangling string" display.

========

"Dedicated to the memory of Mark Weiser and Alan Turing"

-Don

Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.

Mark Weiser is the father of ubiquitous computing; his web page contains links to many papers on the topic.

Two recent papers express elements of the ubiquitous computing philosophy: "Open House" (also in a MS Word version) , and "Designing Calm Technology".

What Ubiquitous Computing Isn't

Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences.

Early work in Ubiquitous Computing The initial incarnation of ubiquitous computing was in the form of "tabs", "pads", and "boards" built at Xerox PARC, 1988-1994. Several papers describe this work, and there are web pages for the Tabs and for the Boards (which are a commercial product now):

Ubicomp helped kick off the recent boom in mobile computing research, although it is not the same thing as mobile computing, nor a superset nor a subset.

Ubiquitous Computing has roots in many aspects of computing. In its current form, it was first articulated by Mark Weiser in 1988 at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC. He describes it like this:

Early Work in Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous Computing #1

Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.

Ubiquitous Computing #2

For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. (I have also called this notion "Ubiquitous Computing", and have placed its origins in post-modernism.) I believe that in the next twenty years the second path will come to dominate. But this will not be easy; very little of our current systems infrastructure will survive. We have been building versions of the infrastructure-to-come at PARC for the past four years, in the form of inch-, foot-, and yard-sized computers we call Tabs, Pads, and Boards. Our prototypes have sometimes succeeded, but more often failed to be invisible. From what we have learned, we are now explorting some new directions for ubicomp, including the famous "dangling string" display.

========

"Dedicated to the memory of Mark Weiser and Alan Turing"

-Don

What he didn't mention is that Microsoft never invented those things -- they're simply exploiting the "Ubiquitous Computing" research developed by other people at Xerox PARC, MIT Media Lab, and many others places.

Our product ConnectedTV, which we demonstrated at CES, is also inspired by the same Ubiquitous Computing research, as well as using other proven user interface techniques like pie menus.

Besides the personalized TV guide and universal remote control, it has many useful home control applications, as well. For an idea of where it's heading, please read some the literature.

We owe a lot to pioneering researchers like the late Mark Weiser (director of Xerox PARC Computer Science Lab), and visionary writers like the late Philip K Dick. May they forever continue to guide and inspire us from half-life.

-Don

"I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, then do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be."

-Glenn Runciter

What he didn't mention is that Microsoft never invented those things -- they're simply exploiting the "Ubiquitous Computing" research developed by other people at Xerox PARC, MIT Media Lab, and many others places.

Our product ConnectedTV, which we demonstrated at CES, is also inspired by the same Ubiquitous Computing research, as well as using other proven user interface techniques like pie menus.

Besides the personalized TV guide and universal remote control, it has many useful home control applications, as well. For an idea of where it's heading, please read some the literature.

We owe a lot to pioneering researchers like the late Mark Weiser (director of Xerox PARC Computer Science Lab), and visionary writers like the late Philip K Dick. May they forever continue to guide and inspire us from half-life.

-Don

"I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, then do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be."

-Glenn Runciter

What he didn't mention is that Microsoft never invented those things -- they're simply exploiting the "Ubiquitous Computing" research developed by other people at Xerox PARC, MIT Media Lab, and many others places.

Our product ConnectedTV, which we demonstrated at CES, is also inspired by the same Ubiquitous Computing research, as well as using other proven user interface techniques like pie menus.

Besides the personalized TV guide and universal remote control, it has many useful home control applications, as well. For an idea of where it's heading, please read some the literature.

We owe a lot to pioneering researchers like the late Mark Weiser (director of Xerox PARC Computer Science Lab), and visionary writers like the late Philip K Dick. May they forever continue to guide and inspire us from half-life.

-Don

"I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, then do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be."

-Glenn Runciter

-Don

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1991 22:48:01 PST
From: Mark_Weiser.PARC@xerox.com
Subject: Re: a rumor?
To: Don Hopkins <hopkins@Eng.sun.com>

Xerox has stopped testing summer student interns in the research labs only. The rest of Xerox still labors under its yoke. Its a win, for sure, but there's still more to win. Thanks for your help.

The information visualizer guys are into gestures, but not pies. They use a rubout motion to delete, and stuff like that. I think the gesturing left and right to close and open trees was more like that.

We ahve been playing with ways to use a stylus to get input without a keyboard and without handwritng recognition. I hacked up a sort of 26 quadrant pie menu, so that each word is a shape (letter-letter-letter, all connected together, and drop ink as you move among the letters: you get a shape. Xerox is a kind of lopsided "X"), and each letter is selected as you move through it, and when you lift up and click down the stylus again you get a space. It has some potential, but 26 quadrants is just to many.

Another possiblity is to put 13 inside 13, and use a state machine so you get the inner circle letter unless you travel all the way through to the outside circle, in which case you get that letter instead, etc. I haven't hack this together yet, maybe tonight.

-mark

Date: Wed, 6 Mar 91 06:43:09 PST
From: hopkins@Eng.sun.com (Don Hopkins)
To: Mark_Weiser.PARC@xerox.com
Cc: hopkins
Subject: alphabetic pies

Have you tried two level 6x6 item pie menu tree for inputting the alphabet (and then some)?

abc ghi mno
def jkl pqr

-X-

stu yz_ ___
vwx ___ ___

You could hang more submenus off of the _'s for numerics, less common glyphs, etc. The SouthEast menu that's all _ could have any number of items, and the South menu might have some special glyphs or submenus in it. The important thing is that the glyphs are chunked in groups of 6, which fits comfortably in your head.

You might also try a two level 6x8 item pies menu tree:

abc ijk qrs
d e l m t u
fgh nop vwx

-X-

yz_012etc
_ _ 9 3 . .
___ 8 4 etc
567

I was thinking about how to do a decimal pie menu tree. The obvious thing is a 10 item pie. But what direction should 0 be, and should the numbers go CW or CCW? But a 10 item menu is only really good for inputting a single digit, or a fixed number of digits, not an arbitrary string of digits (you need a way to terminate the string, and using another mouse button is cheating). Well, most people are familiar with a phone dial, so maybe that's one way to line it up. If you lined the 10 digits up in the same direction as the numbers on the phone dial, you would have a few extra directions to put extra menu items, where there are not holes in the dial. (Hey, how many is that? All the phones in my life have buttons! I guess I'm not as familiar with the phone dial as I thought, but maybe my fingers would remember. Let's say 13.) You could use the extra 3 directions for a decimal point, and/or input editing commands, or commands that consume the number you gestured as input. Or you could just keep selecting digits deeper and deeper, and the system could be smart about only popping up menus that would only allow you to select a number in range (e.g. 0-9999). Much better to disable menu items by dimming them than removing them from the menu, because that would change the numbers items in the menu, and ruin everything.

In a phone dial context, when you needed to input letters, it might be nice to arrange an alphabetic pie like the letters on a phone dial, with submenus of 3 menus items. But it probably wouldn't be as easy to use or remember as the 6x6 alphabetic menu.

-Don

From: Don Hopkins <hopkins@uk.ac.turing>
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 92 22:33:08 BST
To: Mark Weiser <weiser.PARC@com.xerox>
Cc: hopkins@uk.ac.turing
Subject: cmu

Thanks! I sent email to Myers and phoned him up, and after a while he remembered that I was the guy who sent him the pie menu video tapes [...] I'm quite interested in his work, which involves programming by example and demonstration, visual languages, and constructing GUIs with graphical editors using inferencing and constraints, instead of doing so much boiler plate programming.

I am quite interested in pen based stuff, but I don't want to work for any of the companies currently making pen based products because they are so short sighted and limited by perceived market demands and low end technology. (IBM-PC based technology, MS-DOS, bad languages, etc.) Go is using C with crude object oriented scaffolding, but their ideas are sound, and they're at least using their own OS, however the programming environment sucks, they just can't get away from MS-DOS. Momemta is using smalltalk, which, as one of their engineers told me, allowed them to catch up with Go in a very short time. But they definitly have a set of problems of their own, like running on top of MS-DOS and Windows. It's nice that they use smalltalk, but it's rather slow, and more glitzy than well designed. There was a big battle at Momemta between the programmer who's responsible for how nice it is, and the engineering manager in charge or the project, where the manager refused to use smalltalk because it was a "homosexual programming language". Guess he never heard of Lisp! But the programmer certainly proved his point, and the manager took all the credit for making the decision to go with smalltalk. (That's what the manager claimed at their product announcement, and I shook his hand for using smalltalk, and when I told the programmer about that later, boy was he pissed!) But you still can't program the damn thing in smalltalk, *using the pen*! I guess that's one reason they also have a keyboard. There were some other stupid user interface decisions made as well -- my impression from talking to the programmer was that the manager read some books on user interface design principles, and enforced them to the letter without really understanding them and knowing when they should not apply, and when to just use common sense instead.

So far nobody I've heard of has a programming language you can use with a pen, let alone a pen based user interface *written* in and around such a language. What good is a pen computer with a scripting language if you have to use a keyboard to program it? And if it's not programmable, you might as well be using recipe cards. The pen has so much potential, but everybody's trying to use these computers to simulate a piece of paper running MS-DOS. I think it's all well and fine to take advantage of metaphores people are used to (i.e. writing on paper, or beating their head against MS-DOS) but if you limit yourself to simulating paper then you've severly crippled the system, especially when at the same time you severly break the metaphore you're limiting yourself with by trying to be MS-DOS compatible. No piece of paper ever locked up and asked me if I wanted to Abort, Retry, or Ignore. As an example of how you could make a pen computer easier to use by transcending the paper metaphore: when you write on a piece of paper, the information that it stores is two-dimensional. The time componant is completely collapsed and lost. This is not the case with a pen computer, which can remember ink as a three dimensional entity. Why should I be required to write in a fucking comb, if the computer can tell where one letter ends and the next letter begins by the *temporal* separation between letters instead of the visually obvious and traditional spatial separation? Why hasn't anybody written a handwriting recognizer that lets me keep my hand in one place and just write overlapping letters or words without moving my hand back and forth, looking at the page to see when I reach the right margin, moving my hand back to the left margin and no further and down exactly one line, and then writing another line making sure it's parallel with the first? Why can't I just relax, and keep my hand in one place while writing? (I discovered this handwriting technique when I would fall asleep in class while still taking notes. I would wake up and there would be a big ink blob where I kept writing but stopped moving my hand back and forth.) Of course my hand is used to spacing letters out when writing a word, but I think it would be pretty natural to have an input field in a convenient location that I write a word into, which is recognized, then zaps over to where the text input caret is in my document, in a nice font, and the caret moves on, but the place I'm writing stays in the same place. Just like how a keyboard works. Imagine of you had to move the keyboard to the right a bit every time you typed a character, and then move it down and all the way to to the left whenever the cursor reached the right edge of the screen? Nobody would put up with that. Why put up with such a horrible interface using a pen computer? It's only *paper* that forces you to do that.

Well I doubt it would be possible to develop such a non-conformist interface for a company that was rushing to market as fast as they could. Let alone develop a pen based programming language and then write a user interface around it. Did you read the article in Dr. Dobbs Journal (the December UI issue, the same one with my pie menu article) about the pen extension to X-Windows? What an total abortion! I'm sure the next big market demand made on a company like Go or Momenta will be to implement X-Windows for their machine. During the time that every company with a pen computer is trying to do that very same thing and failing miserably, but thinking it's OK because everybody else is failing just as bad, and the users asked for it anyway, so that's what they get, I would like to be doing something completely different, not wasting my time with the latest fads, stampeeds, and lemming dunks.

-Don

See the original idea for mapping network traffic to the physical world, done 4 years ago at Xerox PARC. It's called the Dangling String, and it's a wire that shakes around. The more network traffic, the more it moves.

Chan said,:
Wouldn't they then be referred to generally as ubiquitous computers?

Ubiquitous computing is usually thought of as computers placed ubiquitously throughout our environments, but not worn, and interacting with us. This would work well in combination with wearable computing since the wearable and the ubiquitous computers would likely each gain much by interacting with each other.

Several years ago there was an excellent essay on ubiquitous technology, it was called Calm Computing.

Well worth the read.

Cheers,
Ben

The late Mark Weiser of Xerox PARC wrote an article for Scientific America in 1991 that defined much of the ground work for things like Project Oxygen. Give it a read, it changed my career.