Reading Week 1

Definitions

• Computing that will appear in many different contexts and take a wide variety of forms

• Will affect almost every one of us, whether we’re aware of it or not

• Computing that has insinuated itself into everyday life

• Post-PC world

• Invisible Computing

• Intertwined with the stuff of everyday life

• In every place, but also in every thing

• People would interact with these systems fluently and naturally, barely noticing the powerful informatics they were engaging

• Bridges between the physical and virtual worlds

• Invisible but everywhere

• The rapidly approaching obsolescence of the desktop mode, the coming hegemony of networked devices, and the reconfiguration of everyday life around them

• A language of interaction suited to a world where information processing would be everywhere in the human environment

• Computing that is mobile or wearable or connected or situated

• A distributed phenomenon

• Paradigm shifts

• A new state of being

• Information processing embedded in the objects and surfaces of everyday life

• Dispersed into both the built environment and the wide variety of everyday objects we typically use there

• Computing that cannot interact directly with a human user.

• Incorporating digital intelligence into objects with an everyday form factor

• Getting people out from behind their screens

Examples

• Mobile phones

• Mobile Phones that offer services beyond communication

• Extending computation out into the walls and doorways of everyday experience

• Smart objects, embedded sensors and the always on networks that connected them.

• A range of wireless-enabled, embedded sensors and microcontrollers known generically as motes, as well as an operating system for them to run on.

• Radio-frequency identification tags and two-dimensional barcodes

• Gesture recognition and voice recognition

• Wearable computing, augmented reality, locative media, near-field communication, body-area networking

• Calm technology

• Interactive surfaces

• Ambients, which used phenomena such as sound, light and air currents as peripheral channels to the user

• Tangibles

• Coordinated suite of devices and user interfaces, sensor grids, software architecture, and ad hoc and mesh-network strategies

• Camera’s, watches and phones

• Microcontrollers

• Embedded microprocessors we encounter elsewhere in our lives, generally without being aware of them.

• They pump the brakes in our cars, cycle the compressors in our refrigerators, and adjust the water temperature in our washing machines

• Clothing, furniture, walls and doorways.

• Active badges – grant access to rooms, track people, cn be used to spy on people. Easy to forget about.

• Can be used in items that are universally familiar to anyone who’s ever worked in an office

• A beer mat that summons the bartender when an empty mug is placed upon it

• A bathtub that sounds tone in another room when the desired water temperature has been reached

• Wearable electronics

• Sensors