Ubiquitous Computing — The Invisible Assistant

ChelleChelle writes "Rather than focusing so much on an explanation of ubiquitous computing and its history, this article presents an actual experimental system designed to operate within a cell biology lab. The application, known as Labscape, was intended to function as an 'invisible assistant,' using context to organize and record information and predicting what would be needed by the researchers as any point in time. The author nicely sums up the article at the end by providing several important lessons about building proactive applications."

Comments

So honey...

[legoburner]

"So honey, this is where I work, and here is the automated assistant bot"
"*beep* Here is some monkey-on-chimp pornography which you appear to read alone every tuesday at 10.00. I hope I was able to assist"
"er..."

Project b*llsh*t deflector assistant

[sane?]

A key assistant for the office worker would be an automated deflector of the neverending stream of things seemly designed to stop you working.

Such an assistant would recognise you were falling behind on certain projects and proactively send compatible excuses to the project manager, blaming someone else. The advanced version would recognise problems ahead and kick the problem 'upstairs' for resolution, together with a suggested approach that pushes responsibility elsewhere.

It would recognise key phrases in emails from named individuals, 'losing' those which would cause trouble with a bounce message.

It would generate excuses as to why you couldn't attend meetings, workshops or other timewasting activities.

It would automatically blow your own trumpet if you managed to do something useful, simultaneous storing reference away for review time.

Didn't we learn

[clickclickdrone]

from Microsoft's damned paperclip?

Re:Didn't we learn

[mandos]

We did! We learned what happens when you take a great idea and make a terrible (the worst possible?) implementation and force it on people, in a one size fits all manner.

Now lets see what we can do to take this idea and make a practical solution with it. I'd recommend first scaling back what it tries to do to just one field and then have it start with only the most routine of tasks. We have years and years to turn it into emacs.

Re:Looks interesting

[FishCalledOscar]

Write only media is great. I have a 90 terrabyte write only disk that can hold absolutely everything I ever dreamed of. It's like a bottomless well! It's also great for backups because there is so very much space. Funny thing though, I keep writing to it and it still reports 90 terrabytes! I guess I haven't made a dent yet. It's tiny too. It looks like a broken USB flash drive.