Sentient Computing Lab

dedair writes "From the people who brought you VNC, AT&T labs has been working on an ultrasonic location system that they use in their labs in Cambridge, Engalnd. It turns a whole building into a virtual computing center. No matter where you are in the building, your phone calls can be forwarded to you and with the use of VNC, your desktop is always in front of you. Pretty cool stuff with more details at their website."

Comments

Cool, so can I?

[hardaker]

1) Start napster at my current desk
2) walk into a bathroom stall
3) use the terminal on the back of the door to start playing my newly downloaded song(s)
4) answer the phone there when the RIAA calls?

Big Brother vs. Enabling Technologies

[BlackStar]

Ok, before we get into the "They know everything I'm doing!", we're already there if you company wants to be, so relax.

I think this is a really interesting evolution of the smart-card identifier for terminals, creating a mobile desktop. This starts causing the environment to react to the specific presence of the user. From the JavaOne JavaRing demo of knowing what your coffee preference was, up to this system with speaker-specific transcription services, we may finally get to a technological workplace that enables us rather than causes us to conform to yet another interface.

And as the point to ponder, we are going to need to look at the intent more carefully in legislation. Is is now possible to profile people so completely via spending patterns, location, communication tendencies, etc. that unscrupulous corporation could manipulate trends in people reasonably easily. The laws need to adapt to prevent this misuse, and yet enable honest companies and people to provide legitimate, privacy-ensured services to people that want them without fear of this manipulation.

I'm not a lawyer, but that's how the laws started, was to uphold the moral views of the majority. It appears to me that we will need to return there soon, or we will be forced to forego these types of enabling technologies as are shown by AT&T and these other companies.

You wanna rant, do it offline.

You wanna think, do it here.

Re:AT&T Didn't give us VNC

[indecision]

This really highlights a weakness of the Slashdot system - what looks "insightful" to an intelligent but uninformed (on this topic) moderator, is actually misguiding.

The Olivetti and Oracle Research Labs were acquired by in January 1998 by AT&T Research to form AT&T Labs Cambridge. The same guys work there, doing the same research, under a different banner.

Perhaps moderators need a "This guy is well-meaning but misinformed" option, which demotes the comment, but doesnt detract from the guy's karma? Hmm...

Sun Microsystems has a similar system

[infinite9]

I'm working on a contract at Sun Microsystems at the moment. I have a five-digit phone extension and this thing called a sunray card, but no real cube. Instead, I reserve a cube (really, it's more like a cross between a shower, closet, and phone booth with a patio door) with an intranet application. Then I go to the room with a thin client machine and a 21" monitor. I put the sunray card in and it instantly displays my X session from yesterday. No logging in. All my windows are still open. I can do my work and move to another machine if necessary. Without loggin out, I can pull the card and move to another machine or come back tomorrow. And for the phones, I log in with an access code. My wife can call me at a specific number that doesn't change and the phone system rings the phone I'm next to. It's a great system, but I don't much like being a nomad.