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Too Much Information – Context-Aware Applications
ChelleChelle writes with a link to IBM research on the limits to and lessons learned from two context-aware computing projects:
"As the researchers Moran and Dourish put it, 'Context awareness is fine in theory. The research issue is figuring out how to get it to work in practice.' The article lays out two attempts by IBM to do just this. Grapevine and Rendezvous are services offered to IBM employees as a means of looking into the promise and perils of context-aware computing. From these two experimental services the authors have drawn several valuable lessons." From the article: "What computer scientists commonly call context often has more to do with technology than with work situations, people, or frames of mind."
I work on the help desk for a large company. Every time I ask the customer to right-click on something and the context menu appears, the customer just freaks out. That makes my job tougher than it should be.
http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&p a=printer_friendly&pid=410&page=1
One of the hardest things it seems is to find times to gather that an entire group of friends is free. I really hope that as more people's schedulekeeping is mediated via computing devices, that this information can be used to automatically suggest meeting times, activities, etc that would be interesting for a group. Doesn't take the place of good old-fashioned event planning, but it might increase the possibility of real-life socialization, which, to me, is a very big plus.
Dave ... you may want to close your bathrobe before the video conference ...
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
No, no, no, no.
As I commented on the intuitive OS thread or whatever it was called, users (or at least I) don't want an OS that acts unpredictable. I don't want to wait around for hours for a message before finally figuring out that my cell phone decided I didn't want to be reminded of them right then. Consistency is uncompromisable.
Property is theft.
"First, users often were not comfortable with others knowing what they were doing. The Grapevine service provided complete control over who could observe which elements of context, and users commonly blocked all others from viewing their computer activity all of the time. Although the service allowed observer-by-observer blocking, it was rarely used. This is an area for further research."
And in further news, the Thought Police reported today that Winston Smith has rented an apartment without a telescreen.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
What they need is some sort of motion sensor that detects when the case is jostled, so I can provide feedback to the program in the form of a swift steel-toed boot to the DVD-ROM/drink holder. That'll give it some "context".
AIM now has the ability to enter your location and share it with your buddies. So far only a few of my buddies are using it. They could build some pretty cool apps with this.
http://www.aim.com/triton/plugins.adp
Of course, CAC is the newer and hipper acronym.
...welcome our new information overloads!
My subject says nothing. That's because "context" these days has become a catch-all buzzword for people in the technology industry and academic circles to try to abstract a very complex entity away to focus on some specific detail. Although this sometimes works, it only works when you the specific detail or thing you want to discuss, observe, or code can realistically be isolated from all those complexities you just swept away by calling them 'context'.
:)
The trouble is, when you say you want something to be 'context-aware' you are saying you want it to be aware of all the complexity. Software cannot do this. You want to create something can run on your computer that is more aware than a human is and not just aware in the data sense of facts and trivia, nor simply in the analytical sense of adding facts to facts and substracting trivia. What you want is intuitive awareness and this is the one thing you cannot have in software and systems of the complexity available today (it remains to be seen if it can ever be gained through deterministic computation - the rote addings and subtractings of on and off states or, if it can be found, if it will collapse what was previously thought of as intuition into merely imperfect analysis that would only be acceptable for a human to conclude).
So what am I saying? I'm saying that "context awareness" is just a buzzword for a de facto implausibility. I point you to this quote from the article: "While people clearly do these things today without additional help from context-aware services, the goals of such services are to allow people to make better communication choices, engage in a richer and more valuable interaction, and waste less time in accomplishing their interactions, while providing significant cost savings to the enterprise."
This is contextual statement. It sweeps all the true complexity away in exchange for semantic complexity. It really says nothing and simply uses 30 or so words where two would do: work better.
Why am I going on about this? Becuase it is intellecutally dishonest to pretend that you can brush away the complexity of the world by calling it context. It leads to pointless research projects where aggregations are made, imperfectly, from imperfect information when it could already be obviously judged from the outset that they would ultimately not scale to complexity at hand. It results in 'Xanadu' projects that will forever be stuck in a state of being 'so close' to being useful, but never actually becoming so. There are more concrete things we can attack, things were we can make actual statements rather than vague and amorphous statements about what a system might theoretically do. It's just a matter of rolling up the sleeves and doing some work instead of engaging in intellectual laziness and then wasting other people's time with our frivolities.
Which is all to say that I found the article and information contained therein not worth the time of reading.
Yes! I mean, this features *are* interesting enough to be researched :-) The problem is: the computer doesn't have our feedback. We need to say "thank you" or "hey, what are you doing?", and they need to be able to interpret it. When devices like the ones FTA starts to interpret our feedback, they'll be able to decide more accurately what to do and what not to do.
ilex paraguariensis for all
Can somebody give me a better breakdown explanation? I read TFA, but couldn't gather it's meaning from the context. Damn this non-context aware application...
"But this one goes to 11!"
The only context aware application I need is context sensitive help. When I push F1 on my computer keyboard input device, the help menu that is loaded onto my display monitor output device should be the one that explains the field my text cursor was in at the time of said keypress.
having the word program (like Microsoft Word type of program) know what you're typing about?
Like, "Hello, I noticed you are writing an essay on "prostate problems". I have faxed your essay to a local proctologist for you. Thank you, have a good day."
I think a lot of comments are missing out on the prime feature of a contextual system - It must be rules-based. The problem with things like MS Office menus is that you can't decide how it is going to work. The other thing is they must have a good idea as to where you really are and who is with you. Imagine the following scenarios:
- You're in a meeting with project team-mates and the project leader calls - ring through.
- You're in a meeting with project team-mates and a non-project related co-worker calls - to voicemail
- In your office all calls are forwarded to the land-line. Out of office all calls are forwarded to the cell.
- Cell never rings when you're in the washroom.
This can be applied outside the workplace as well:
- Baby is in its room and you're not - only the phone closest to you rings.
- Alarm on your cell phone goes off one or two stations before you have to get off the train.
- Phone automatically goes silent in the theatre, and then only vibrates if the server room is calling.
All these scenarios are specific to a person, and depend on that person sorting contacts into groups and setting up the system for their particular requirements. Default rules can be provided (i.e. no phone in the washroom), but it is obvious that people need to inform a contextual system of their relationships to others in the system and create rules that suit their requirements.
... so how could they be expected to develop software that is? It might be argued that missing both the Big Picture *and* the devilish details is the equivalent of blissful ignorance (or at least deniability), so please don't take that away from me!
I'd rather have computers and systems that augment humans and make them "smarter".
Rather than computers and systems that allow stupid humans to stay just about as stupid as they are.
There is a difference between the two. Really!
For the latter, the goal is making AI or some other system to second guess individual humans (who are assumed to be stupid) and make decisions for them, or have some "expert" or "centralized authority" make the decisions for them (e.g. the RIAA decides whether you get to play the song again).
For the former, your goal is making systems that help make humans superhuman. Sure there is some overlap (you usually don't want to micromanage), but the goals and thus paths would be different.
It's the difference between aiming for smart lifts that still let you choose which floor you want to go to, and lifts that try to guess which floor you want to go to, once you get on them - or rearrange their lift buttons so that it's "easier for you to press the right ones"- context sensitive lift buttons, wonderful idea eh?
The lifts in the former (and latter) could still check (cams etc) to see how many people are waiting on each floor and try to distribute themselves accordingly.
Our species core competency and specialization is supposed to be "intelligence and reproduction" (whereas ruminants are "digesting cellulose and reproduction").
I really don't think it is a good idea to keep aiming for the "humans get to be really stupid" target.
That said intelligence is overrated, maybe we would have a better future if all the individuals were nicer.
I, for one, welcome our Information Overloads.
(ducks)