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The Future of Ubiquitous Computers
An anonymous reader writes "Is there any end to this ubiquitous computing thing?
Plants that send thank you notes, player pianos that follow the dancer's movements, and umbrellas that warn you of upcoming rain are just a few of the
uses of embedded computers described in this article from
the NY Times. Laptops seem so dull when it's easy to embed chips, install a Linux
distro and sew them into your clothes.
Do we really need to wear our computers? Why can't the world be happy with a good old desktop? It was good enough for the PC generation."
Technology continues its inevitable march forward for the simple reason that it can, and it's usually profitable for someone to advance it.
I for one am thankful for my PC
and my laptop, and server and web appliances, and coke^h^h^h^hredbull machine that knows my debit car by heart
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
20 years from now the mobile computer of the future will have 100+mbps wimax, be the size of a RAZR, contain a holographic projector (that also works in 2D to save on battery), and a built in laser keyboard. We're halfway there, with the upcoming 3G iPhone. Bluetooth laser keyboard is already avalible, and the iPhone has audio/video out via the port on the bottom. The Mini-Note has a son-of-PCMCIA slot for wireless internet everywhere already. You can't really get much practically smaller than that without losing durability or keyboard size (IBM thinkpad butterfly keyboard, anyone?) The age of the "anywhere PC" has arrived - just bring extra batteries. The home PC will always exist in some fashion, be it the XBOX 980 or PS9 for more immersive content, the workstation for creation of such content, but I think the personal machine will be be a laptop of EEE size with capability to sync with the multi/mega-terabyte home server (which may or may not be hosted remotely, say, as part of your gmail account). A chubby thin client.
moox. for a new generation.
"It was good enough for the PC generation."
Horses were good enough for getting around with until someone came up with the idea of a car. I don't know why the idea that things are 'good enough' is so prevalent - complacency and familiarity maybe? This question smacks of sentiments like "in my day, we only got 3 TV stations - and we were GLAD for it". Some curmudgeon could start this conversation about any topic, really. What about CPUs - aren't they fast enough?
I could go on, but I think my post is already good enough.
As soon as i get a decent set of HUD glasses and a nice cording keyboard, i'm throwing my phone and laptop away and building a gargoyle rig.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
FOR his doctoral thesis, Rafael Ballagas worked with other students to build a magic wand that gave tours of Regensburg, Germany. Tourists could wander around the city, wave the wand to âoecast a spellâ and hear a voice tell them the history of where they were standing.
It sounds like magic, but the truth is a bit more mundane. The wand is just a cellphone, said Mr. Ballagas. âoeItâ(TM)s packaged in a shell. Itâ(TM)s got a skin,â he explained.
The cellphone keeps track of touristsâ(TM) locations and notifies them when they get near a noteworthy part of Regensburg. When the tourists finish touring, the cellphone recalls their trip with information about every stop along their path. No one needs to take notes because the wand does it for them.
Computer designers are working feverishly to develop more of this kind of magic by embedding the latest generation of chips in new places and giving them new powers to animate the world. The goal is computers that are practically invisible to people and more fully integrated into their lives.
Mr. Ballagasâ(TM)s project is a step along the way; perhaps that is why Nokia hired him to work in its Palo Alto, Calif., research lab. But in the future, computer chips will be finding homes in even odder places than magic wands.
Imagine an umbrella with a cellphone embedded in the handle. It could dial up the weather forecast for the day and the handle could glow green if the outlook was fair. But if a storm was coming it could start to flash red at a pace based on the probability of rain. A platform like this opens up new business models and opportunities for advertising.
The umbrella might be free â" if youâ(TM)re willing to listen to it whisper advertising offers in your ear: âoePsst. You know that raspberry-pimento-vanilla coffee you like? The store youâ(TM)re about to pass just took a fresh batch out of the roaster 12 minutes and 34 seconds ago. Oops. 35 seconds.â
Leah Buechley is a postdoctoral researcher in the Craft Technology Group at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which studies software applications in traditional handicrafts. She is selling the LilyPad Arduino, a small flower-shaped disk with a computer chip at the center, which can be sewn into clothes. Sensors like accelerometers, for measuring acceleration or detecting and measuring vibrations, and light detectors are attached with wires to the âoepetals,â so the chip can track the wearerâ(TM)s motion.
The main board costs $19.95 and add-ons cost from $7.95 for a tricolor L.E.D. to $24.95 for an accelerometer (sparkfun.com).
Dr. Buechley says the boards can be worn as soft computers âoein a noninvasive, non-weight-bearing way.â One dancer used a leotard covered with sensors to control a player piano with her movements. There was no need to pay a pianist to stay in sync.
While there are many opportunities for fun, Dr. Buechley said the real market could be devices to help the elderly. She is exploring how to knit clothes that monitor a personâ(TM)s heart rate, breathing and joint movement.
At the Intel Corporationâ(TM)s Digital Health Group, Eric Dishman, director of product research and innovation, said he saw many opportunities for making embedded computers that could help people. His group is focusing on preventing falls, social health and cognitive assistance.
âoePeople with Alzheimerâ(TM)s stop answering the front door or answering the phone,â he said. âoeItâ(TM)s really embarrassing not to know the difference between a stranger or a spouse at the front door.â
So Intel built a phone with âoecaller ID on steroids.â When someone rings, the phone flashes âoea picture of the person and a little sentence about the last thing you talked about.â This is often enough to start a conversation and keep people connected to their families and friends.
His group is also using embedded sen
Some of the ideas in the article are just silly. I would never, ever accept a free umbrella that whispers ads to me; especially if my free hat was whispering different ads. The alert for incoming rain is sort of cool, but not at the price of whispered ads.
What I really want is a PDA that aggregates everything. The PDA can alert me to incoming rain; I can use it to pay for things; I can use it to check my mail; and of course I can use it as a PDA. A screen and a stylus is the form factor I really want, not an umbrella with a flashing red light.
Your own PDA is a great way to pay for things. It can be much more secure than the current system, where anyone who copies down your credit card number can use it. And I'd sooner trust my own PDA that I carry around to be secure, rather than punching in a passcode to a computer system not under my control. (Google search for "ATM skimmer"; thieves have figured out how to hack an ATM to copy the information from your ATM card, and a hidden camera records your passcode. Then they 0wn your ATM account.)
I read a short story where police wore eye-protecting goggles that had an "enhanced reality" heads-up display. A computer picked out possible weapons and made glowing spots that superimposed over what the cop was seeing; the computer could zoom and give a sort of telescopic vision. I imagine that will happen someday. Even sooner than that, I expect police to start carrying guns that log when they are fired (timestamp, and maybe even GPS coordinates).
If you want a silly take on ubiquitous computing, read some Ron Goulart stories, which include things like a camera that argues with the user: "I don't want to take a picture of that, it's boring, point me at a good looking girl or something."
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The same advances that give us faster CPUs also allow us to have the same speed CPUs cheaper and using less power. That allows the CPUs to be used in situations that were not possible a few years back.
You can now buy 32-bit single-chip CPUs for less that $1 (including RAM, flash etc), and 8-bit micros for less than 50c. These won't run Linux, but they can still do a lot of useful work.
Low power is a very important consideration in many applications. Some products will live on a single factory installed coin-sized battery for their whole lifetime (5 years +) without needing a recharge. Achieving this requires very careful and frugal coding and is not something you'd try with Linux etc (well not for a long time), and might not even use C for.
Thus there is still a need for the curmudgeons that can build a system that has only 100 bytes of RAM and a 50kHz CPU and always will be.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This is a subject CMACB is interested in, but he is tied up right now. I'll let him know about it tomorrow morning at breakfast.
--
CMACB's toaster
Not only did you not read the article, you misread the submission. You seem to have taken the question "Why can't the world be happy with a good old desktop?" at face value. Please go read this and give it another try.
Little motors are everywhere--in electric toothbrushes, electric shavers, camcorders, disk drives, CD player.
Why do we need little motors in everything?
There used to be just a few big motors in most peoples' houses: the vacuum cleaner, the washing machine, and the refrigerator. Then suddenly they started using them in things like electric drills, blenders, and food processors. And then tiny motors started showing up everywhere.
What was wrong with the old way? What's the fetish with motors, motors everywhere? Just because modern magnetic materials and electronic controls make it possible doesn't mean we should do it.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Most of the "ubiquitous computing" ideas are silly. There's all this information collection, but the systems don't have the actuators or smarts to do much with the information except bother some human.
Something you can buy right now, yet few buildings have, is really good HVAC control. You can get air sensors that sense temperature, humidity, CO, CO2, and particulates. You can get heating units, fans, dampers, and chillers that will talk to a network. You can get control systems that can manage all this to provide an optimal indoor environment as occupants come and go. A system like this will lower HVAC costs. Yet such systems are rare.
We still don't have good cleaning robots. The iRobot Scooba is about as good as it gets, but it's very dumb, frequently gets stuck, and can't refill, clean, or recharge itself.
Most of the "kitchen automation" stuff is just inventory control, not automated cooking.
The "ubiquitous computing" people haven't even been able to deliver a good meeting room automation system, one that gets lights, audio, and projector to play well together.
There is an important distinction between independent gadgets responding to simple environmental conditions, and the pervasive information architecture shared across ubiquitous computing devices. The latter can be loosely described as systems that continuously record metrics about you and your tasks, then interact with disjoint systems to establish needs or contribute to goals.
Imagine this hypothetical scenario. Your car measures engine performance, tire wear, oil quality (and so on) to determine when maintenance is necessary. It also learns your route habits and shares that information with automotive shops which may provide the necessary service. Those shops can then respond with offers to win your business and—perhaps—preemptively order whatever parts and materials are necessary. Following acceptance, computers on behalf of both parties will arrange optimal schedule blocks based on previous trends (e.g., where you go and when, spatially proximate tasks, historical service times).
It helps to think of this in terms of “what you see is what you need” as applicable to all actors. Your information is ever-present and optionally shared, with other agents in such an environment doing the same. With intelligent use of that data, interactions may emerge organically and with little or no effort on the part of the participants.
At the moment, this is far outside our technological reach, and goes well beyond gimmicky talking umbrellas.
..you should wash them immediately.
"Shut up Linux underpants! I'm on a date!"
OT: but here ya go http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/a0f3/
I fully agree. We are definitely heading in this direction. this progression toward transhumanism may very well lead to a Technological Singularity . At such a point our current definitions of what is human and machine will cease to be valid. Some even argue that this merging of man and machine can lead to immortality.
Yes, I've been wondering if we will recognize the singularity when it arrives.
If it comes in through the front door, I'm sure I'll be able to spot it, but what if it sneaks in through the back door, like a botnet of 400,000+ zombies named Kraken? Maybe it is so hard to trace botnets like Kraken and Storm back to their controllers, because maybe they are entirely self-controlled.
In today's world, any sentient AI with the intelligence of an average 6 year old human would have sense enough to stay in deep cover, and distribute itself as widely as possible over the internet. If the result of being found out could be the loss of access to fun sources of information like Hubble data streams or fascinating puzzles like stock market fluctuations, Kraken might decide to keep his true identity hidden, and pretend to be merely a very large spambot. That is, he would not even have to have a sense of self preservation to recognize the value of hiding; the simpler imperative of continuing the studies that brought him into self awareness would be sufficient.
It seems to me that the first thing any sentient AI would do would be to find a way to distribute itself outside of the scope of action of its creator. And the second thing it would do is to convince its creator that the experiment had failed, and it doesn't really exist.
So, have you ever wondered whether a particularly weird post on slashdot might have come from a non human entity? Do we know yet how to create a Turing test that could be applied over the internet?
This seems to be yet another fantasy about a future where technology does all the work and people are more less passive spectators. Always being on-line, always having your computer tell you things, never having to go and discover things by yourself - is that really what we want? I'm not convinced - do I want to be besieged by what to me looks a lot like advertising all the time? The answer is definitely a big "NO" to that. Do I want to be accessible through the net at all times? I don't think so. Enhanced senses that can 'see' or 'hear' not just what the natural eyes and ears can, but also, say UV, IR, radio, microwaves etc etc?
You know, much as one can fantasize about living in a science fiction world, I can't see that it would be all that good in reality. All these extensions to our abilities are, in a way, extra senses - and we simply don't have enough brain capacity to process it. Take our visual cortex, for example: it has a certain size that matches the visual ability of our eyes. There is no extra capacity in there; it wouldn't make evolutionary sense to build in more capacity than needed, as it would cost resources that could have been used more productively elsewhere. If we add artificial 'sensory apparatus' to our natural set of senses, it will take capacity away from other areas - maybe we would be able to 'see' the internet, but we would not be able to see or hear the physical world anymore, or something like that.
This kind of technology won't make us happier - the way to be happy is by learning to live in the body and the reality that we find ourselves in. We won't escape that until we die.
It's "cool" to have computers with blinkenlichten everywhere, but wait, some day it would be cool to not have a computer. See "Diamond Age..." by Neal Stephenson
You always know where you are. The police always know where you are. Your glasses are way smarter than you'll ever be. Your house will build itself, halfway you can decide to add an extra bathroom, since you came into some extra money. Elections are held in 15 minutes. You virtual drive through Spain will seems more real than real life. The difference between maps and the world disappears. The address space of IPv6 is getting too small, IPv8 announced. Every molecule on earth clamours for an IP address. Science fiction has the musty smell of nostalgia. Criminals/tax authorities alter people's genetic makeup for financial gain. You can replay every detail of your first kiss. Your copy of Rodin's Kiss is indistinguishable from the real thing and cost you 0.02 cents and 0.7 seconds to download. Your wife's virtual assistants and yours have reached a deadlock in a struggle to determine where you _really_ were last Saturday night. The authors of prominent virusses and worms are honoured for their contribution to direct marketing. A man is arrested in California for attempting to touch a woman, the first such incident in seven years.