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.

Being three weeks into school, things are a little hectic, but I ended up choosing the two classes I wanted to stick with for the semester:

Making Furniture Interactive
Although it wasn’t a class I even knew about until classes started, this class is essentially about physical computing and embedding electronics into physical objects. This is pretty closely related to things I’m interested in, with regards to the boundaries of physical and digital contexts. It’s nice to actually work on making something that has multiple facets of production (physical, electronic, and computational), but that also makes it difficult. Most of the time success means getting something simply to function rather than making something meaningful. We have been posting the work we do on this blog.

Graduate Typography
After getting a bunch of mixed reviews from people who took the class, I figured I should take it anyway since I want to have a good foundation for visually communication ideas. I’m surprised at how useful it has been so far. I’ve always thought of my problem with typography being a matter of choosing the right font, and the approach that Kristen Hughes takes already has helped me in understanding how to start using type. I’m slowly getting used to the subjective aspects and freedom that is created through constraints.

Thesis Project
I’m glad to say that I feel somewhat confident about what I’m doing with the project. I’ve started with a somewhat formed vision of what is important with my topic and why I want to do it. I’m working on Ad-Hoc assistance and how people can share resources between each other, possibly using mobile devices. I’m going to interview people who are involved in volunteer groups to get a sense of their attitudes and thoughts, and also approach the east end food co-op as a user group that collaborates through helping. I’m hoping the research will help in creating a system to make it easy for regular people to participate in everyday assistance. I think it’s great for me because it puts me outside of my comfort zone and is something I don’t know very much about. The only worry is time.

Thesis Paper
This one’s a little tough. Every week I feel like I’m formulating something worthwhile just to be thrown into doubt and anxiety following our thesis meetings. I feel lost a lot of the time and unsure if what I am writing about and why it’s worth my time and energy. Somewhat like our Seminar II papers last year. Right now I’m looking at how people assign meaning to space resulting in places. It all relates to pervasive technology and something about perception and flow. I’m hoping I can clarify this for myself as soon as possible.

If anything, I’m coming across tons of questions that be thesis topics in themselves. Here’s to hoping that things start coming together, and quickly.