What is ubiquitous computing?
In tackling the topic of my thesis paper, this question in its various forms has been eating at me for a while. And while there are common themes and concepts that people bring up when describing it, I’m not so sure that we will ever end up experiencing it in the way people talk about it. I don’t think it’s a matter of suddenly deploying a large network that now enables everything to be interactive and linked up. It seems to me that ubicomp is more accurately an evolutionary process in which we figure out how new technology fits into our current situations. Perhaps it’s simply becoming the reference to technology that addresses our everyday needs and not the development of specialized tools and products.
My question is then not what is it, but why is it? I feel like interaction design as we learn it at school is the most appropriate way to approach this topic. Why do we feel the need to talk about ubicomp as something distinct? Essentially interaction designers are working on these small pieces of information technology (and yes, products in general) that are addressing people’s needs regardless of the overarching organization of coherent ubiquitous system. This is interesting because the discussion is no longer about the speculations and possibilities and is more about a bottom-up approach to designing this future.
So who is designing the now and future of computing anyway? Is it the humanistic designers who empathize with people’s needs? Is it large corporations who have enough money to deploy infrastructure only when it’s convenient for them? Or is it DIY hackers who aggressively subvert these companies, organize, and create ad-hoc networks of their own? Maybe it’s everyone. The healthy(hopefully) interplay between all these different might have the potential to scrap together new ways that we will use technology as a resource.
As I’m investigating, I came across a great post that references an old paper that questions ubicomp. Perfect timing.
