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The 'Pervasive Computing' Community
Roland Piquepaille writes "Most of us are using computers, but also PDAs and cell phones. And this trend is accelerating in our increasingly networked wireless world. We might use hundreds of computing devices by the end of this decade. Still, we are slaves to our machines. With every new device, we have to learn new commands, languages or interfaces. The Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI), a strategic alliance between the University of Cambridge in the UK and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S., has enough of it and wants to give back control to the users. So it launched its 'Pervasive Computing' initiative with the intention to tackle this challenge. In particular, the group wants to develop new technologies to make easier for us to interact with all these computers. This overview contains more details and references about this initiative."
I've got a Zaurus 5500, and love it for what I use it for, but a Palm seems to make a better PDA. So, I've come to the conclusion that a Linux handheld device isn't a PDA, but a small-sized computer. So, a Linux pda makes for a good platform if you are a unix developer who needs to write custom hand-held software. Also, while there are a bunch of Palm apps out there, not many are free. It's not that I have to have everything for free, but often times an app doesn't quite work the way I want, and I like to be able to tweek them a bit. An example, I found a good TI-85 calculator emulator, but the buttons looked awful. A bit of messing around with the xpm definitions, and now the button colors are defined in the config file. This is the kind of stuff that you just can't do with non-free apps that you find on Palm or PocketPC.
As for what I use mine for:
* Web lookups (i.e., looking up items in Internet phone books, TV listings, dictionary definitions)
* Other web browsing when it wouldn't due to to carry a laptop (meetings, nature's call, etc)
* Custom PIM app -- I wrote a web-based app which allows me to organize data and meeting notes in a unique way that suites me. On my Zaurus, I've got a version of the app served up by a local web server. Whenever I'm within wireless range, a background task automatically keeps the local database synced with the one on my server. (Once I perfect it, I'll put it up on sourceforge).
* Entertainment -- with a wireless card in the Zaurus, and one in my laptop, I can stream movies and music to the kids in the car served up by my laptop which I use for navigation. It also runs Mame.
-- BSD or Bust
This is something I'd love to see happen in my lifetime, sort of a life goal if you will. The idea here is like Bluetooth but infinitely scaleable, extendable in all directions, peer to peer, and so drop dead simple grandmother could use it without a manual.
In a perfect system like this each node has about a 10 or so foot wireless range, each node extends the network like a repeater, and these babies are embedded in absolutely everything. Your robotic lawnmower needs to talk to your irrigation system but is 20 feet from it? Simple enough, both devices understand the network physical topology intimately and just route the communication through your SUV. And nobody should have to configure a thing for this to work.
but doesn't anyone else see the irony?Now that I've read the article, I like what they're doing. Instead of trying to complicate our lives further, they want to change the way things work; which is good. Longer battery lifespans, secure UIs, ubiquitous communication, etc.
I do think its a waste of time to try and create a 'better' input method. Pretty much the only thing faster than typing is a direct connection to your brain. We can type faster than we speak & read faster than we can listen.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This sounds exactly like what M$ (motto: "All your devices are belong to us") is trying to do - PCs, office software, servers, enterprise software, XBox, PocketPC, media formats, online music sales, tablet computers, MSN, etc. I wonder who will win the interface definition standardization game? A bunch of really smart people at MIT or an even larger bunch of better funded smart people at Microsoft? (Note: at $6 billion dollars, Microsoft's R&D department has more than 4 times the money of ALL of MIT.)
Can me bitter, but I fear that with billion in R&D and hundreds of millions of dollars for marketing, M$ will win this game unless they commit suicide.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Things like this have been looked at before but not enougha nd not recently enough to keep all of the new technology in mind. I think it is insane that we are still using computers almost the same as we were when the first GUI OS came out. IT is time computers reacted to use better.
Dan Mayer: my blog, essays, art, etc
This has been a floating research topic in Cambridge for a long time.
The old Olivetti Research Labs (ORL) performed a lot of blue sky research activities, including production of omniORB (free CORBA ORB) and VNC (virtual network client) and so on. In fact, VNC was part of the focus on pervasive computing.
There was an umbilical cord between ORL and Cambridge Computer Laboratory with people like Andy Hopper and so on.
AT&T bought ORL in the late 1990's bringing it under its AT&T Labs arm: unfortunately it was too blue sky for AT&T is now days (e.g. AT&T Labs in Middletown NY is more commercially oriented - and as we've seen recently, they've lost a lot of fantastic talent by changing their focus) and closed in 2002.
Microsoft Research Institute in Cambridge has a lot of staff that fell out of these places, and the umbilical cords remain. It's an incestuous community (but a good one, it breeds a lot of new and interesting things).
The kinds of blue sky technologies that used to come out of these labs are now being produced by open source community.
If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it,
and spend your time serving it.
(Marion Zimmer Bradley, 'The Forbidden Tower')
The machine does not isolate man from the great problems
of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
(Antoine De Saint-Exupery)
regards,
john
Just my opinion of course but instant messaging etc. has just served to make people unable to think.
Don't know how to do something? Don't bother with the manual or anything, just call tech support. I swear no one can make a decision on wiping their rear without consulting someone else.
Vote Quimby!
Honestly, I don't think the question "why we need all this" will be asked. It simply will happen. Primarily to create additional 'benefit' for the users, whatever it may be.
;)
I agree with you that the tools today are not quite there. Laptops are too bulky, PDAs (esp. PocketPCs) drain the battery too quickly. Still, consider that we are pretty much at the beginning of the development, comparable to the 60s or 70s with regard to the PC.
Taking into account the speed of development (and the interest from both the potential users and the industry), considering what cell phones lookes like 5-10 year ago, imagine what will happen over the next 10 years. My personal bet: it will be impressive.
To use another parallel from the early days of the internet, I'm sure nobody saw the immediate benefit of transporting some data packets over a network. Want news? Buy a newspaper. Want music? Buy a CD. You get the idea
Again, I agree with you that todays mobile/pervasive technology can be improved - pen and paper are currently still essential. And I'm sure it will happen. Then we end up with electronic paper which takes your notes and then displays, if requested, the headlines of the major newspapers around the globe.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Right now the computers are in their infancy. The people who will ultimately use these pervasive computing environments, those that are just now in grade school, will be trained to use whatever interface the producers of this technology develop. It is nice to have academic research to back up the production and marketing guys, but which group has the most years of experience getting users to use electronics?
Take some examples. I never had any trouble learning or figuring out what the dials, yes the dial, on the TV did. I never had any trouble figuring out the top dial had to be set to a certain place in order to use the bottom dial. It was actually a complex logic puzzle. I figured it out. The same thing with the VCR. I now see three year old children able to navigate the complex buttons of the modern TV with no trouble at all. And they can't even read. The do by spatial position.
The same is true for vending machines, microwave ovens, whatever you like. There is no such thing as a truly intuitive interface, although some are more intuitive than others. There is really no reason to make the audio controllers on a computer the same as on a radio, except as a crutch to the older users. The young will choose the design that works for them. They will use it in ways that the researchers never thought of. And most will use it without any understanding of the technology, not even the basic notion that the color of the LED is created by the quantum mechanics.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Even if they wanted to play this game, which I don't believe they do, Microsoft have no chance:
Fortunately, those aren't the only choices.
The key problem you're having is that you're focusing on the shortcomings of your current technology, instead of the possibilities of the future. Obviously, a laptop or PDA or even a Tablet PC) isn't going to be good at note taking as a pad of paper, but imagine (for example) a device that looked, felt, and acted like paper, except that you could scribble down your equation, write a '=', and the device would write the answer for you. Or imagine that you could write your notes normally, but they would automatically store and organize themselves electronically so that you could search through them more easily later, or email them to your coworkers, or whatever.
Or, imagine that you're walking down the hallway in your office, and someone comes up to talk to you. You should know who they are, but you forgot their name. Luckily, your augmented-reality wearable computer with head mounted display (or maybe direct neural implant) superimposes the person's name in the air above their head, along with the fact that their birthday is tomorrow and that you were planning to ask them a question about a project you're working on together.
Asking why we need all these computers at this point is like asking the Wright Brothers why anybody needs an airplane, since it's hard to use, unreliable, and can't carry any cargo. We haven't finished refining this technology; we haven't even finished inventing it yet!