Ubiquitous computing (or “ubicomp”) is the label for a “third wave” of computing technologies. Following the eras of the mainframe computer and the desktop PC, ubicomp is characterized by small and powerful computing devices that are worn, carried, or embedded in the world around us. The ubicomp research agenda originated at Xerox PARC in the late 1980s; these days, some form of that vision is a reality for the millions of users of Internet-enabled phones, GPS devices, wireless networks, and “smart” domestic appliances.

In Divining a Digital Future, computer scientist Paul Dourish and cultural anthropologist Genevieve Bell explore the vision that has driven the ubiquitous computing research program and the contemporary practices that have emerged–both the motivating mythology and the everyday messiness of lived experience.

Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the authors’ collaboration, the book takes seriously the need to understand ubicomp not only technically but also culturally, socially, politically, and economically. Dourish and Bell map the terrain of contemporary ubiquitous computing, in the research community and in daily life; explore dominant narratives in ubiquitous computing around such topics as infrastructure, mobility, privacy, and domesticity; and suggest directions for future investigation, particularly with respect to methodology and conceptual foundations.

Paul Dourish is Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, with courtesy appointments in Computer Science and in Anthropology. He conducts research in human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and social studies of science and technology. Before joining UC Irvine, he was a Senior Member of Research Staff at Xerox PARC.

Genevieve Bell is an Intel Fellow and the Director of Intel’s first user-focused research and development lab, Interaction and Experience Research. A cultural anthropologist, she studies the relationship between information technology and cultural practice both in technology design and in settings of everyday use. Before joining Intel, she taught Anthropology and American Studies at Stanford University.

“The way in which people frantically communicate online via Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging can be seen as a form of modern madness, according to a leading American sociologist.

“A behaviour that has become typical may still express the problems that once caused us to see it as pathological,” MIT professor Sherry Turkle writes in her new book, Alone Together, which is leading an attack on the information age.”

The article also covers other critical contributions, including The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov, The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein, We Have Met The Enemy by Daniel Akst, and Cyburbia by James Harkin.

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Alone Together has also been reviewed in The New York Times and the New Scientist (see also this previous blog post).

“Where once artificial intelligence researchers proposed artefacts that would win us over with their smartness, designers of these latest machines aim to seduce with sociability. Sociable robots press our “Darwinian buttons”: we respond to humanoid objects that make eye contact, track our motion and say our names as “creatures” with intentions, consciousness, even feelings.

Indeed, when an object reaches out and asks us to care for it, we find we not only want to care for it, but want it to care for us in return. Nurturance turns out to be the “killer app” in our relationships with the inanimate. We are vulnerable to new attachments, seduced by machines that ask for our care. They “pretend” to converse, but do not understand what we say. Engrossed by sociable robots, we are alone yet experience a new sense of intimacy.” [...]

“Alone with robots, we feel connected; together with people but not fully relating to them, we feel alone. We are in the still centre of a perfect storm. I call this the “robotic moment”, a technological moment in which we fear our lives with technology are out of control, and we fantasise, paradoxically, that it is technology that will help us re-establish control.”

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In her new book Alone Together, she shares her ambivalence about the overuses of technology, which, she writes, “proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.” The book completes a trilogy of investigations into the ways humans interact with technology.

Fast Company spoke recently with Turkle about connecting, solitude, and how that compulsion to always have your BlackBerry on might actually be hurting your company’s bottom line.

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Now, writes the Arduino blog, Rodrigo Calvo, Raúl Díez Alaejos, Gustavo Valera, and the people at Laboral Centro de Arte in Gijon, Spain, have created a video documentary, entitled Arduino The Documentary, that you can view on Vimeo in English and Spanish.

Here is some background by Matthew Humphries published on geek.com:

Open source software has had a major impact on the applications and platforms we all use today. Linux is now a very viable alternative to Windows and Mac OS even for beginner PC users. The Android operating system looks set to dominate on mobile hardware, and more and more software applications are being released for free as open source projects by anyone who can learn to program.

Now the same looks set to happen for hardware. With the development of cheap, easy to use electronics components as part of the Arduino computing platform, it’s becoming much easier to create your own hardware solutions without spending a lot of money.

No longer do we have to leave hardware creation to the large corporations with access to manufacturing plants and skilled workers. Instead, we can spend a few dollars buying an Arduino board, a bunch of components, and start experimenting with the support of a growing online community.

The video above gives you an introduction to what Arduino is and how it has developed since its inception. You come away thinking anything is possible with a bit of learning and a 3D printer, and why not? If software can be free to use, why can’t hardware be free to create and distribute?

The clear message Arduino The Documentary gives out is that we are about to see an explosion of hardware devices that come from bedroom tinkerers and student projects. Not only that, but they have the potential to turn into commercial products that businesses form around and investors flock to. We also have an opportunity to get electronics taught to our kids in schools for very little cost and hopefully start producing the next generation of talented engineers.

“Dave Bevans: You can look at how technology works and what tools can work best, but what drives you to make them easier?

Mike Kuniavsky: “Easier” is a difficult question. I like to think of it as using technology in appropriate places. And I can think of it as creating technologies that help people live their lives better. What tools can we build to help people have happier and more productive lives? Part of that is understanding the appropriate places for technological interventions based on the available technology, and part of that is understanding the way to make those technological interventions appropriate to people and to what they’re trying to do. I think the combination of those things is what combines to form the concept of easier. Because when technology is easy to use, it means that it’s appropriate to the task and it’s sufficiently understandable to be able to be used for that task.”

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(via InfoDesign)

The article highlights the innovative role of Fiat, which has been compiling data from the Blue&Me navigation systems installed on many of its cars over a six-month period – the largest such data harvest done by a major carmaker.

“It is not hard to see a future where the on-board computers get ever more sophisticated – such as personal profiles for a car, so the car’s settings are individualised for each family member.

The computer would adjust the seats, music, the suspension between sports and comfort mode, depending on which family member was using the car.

All while telling each one how to be a better – and more fuel-efficient – driver. [...]

Increased data collection also tells us a lot about different drivers and how they use the cars. [...]

Carmakers are bracing for a world where not only are cars collecting data about you, but they are sharing it with each other.”

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“Magitti is a next generation location-based mobile app, currently in commercial trials in Japan. It goes further than popular apps like Foursquare and Gowalla. As well as using GPS data to figure out where you are, Magitti computes a user’s preferences and context. It then makes recommendations of near-by places to go, based on that personal data. [...]

[It is] a mobile recommender service that recommends outdoor leisure activities to you based on your current time and location. More than that, it accounts for the user’s “digital situation as identified by messages they’ve been exchanging or documents they’ve been looking at.”

Begole explained that the app infers the user’s likely leisure activity and then helps partition the types of information they’d be interested in.”

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Further background
- Blogpost by Begole where he discusses PARC’s work on contextual intelligence
- Case study on the role of ethnography in the Magitti development

Homesense is an epic piece of open research that explores how people can build their own DIY smart homes using open hardware and supported by local experts. The concepts for Homesense came out of the failure of top-down design to give us the ‘smart homes’ of the future, and wondering how a more democratized system of innovation could make that design process better. The project has sponsored by EDF R&D, and supported by the HighWire research group at Lancaster University.

“Since early Spring a huge amount has been going on behind the scene – little duck-legs paddling furiously under the surface of the water – and, now that the project is live here’s a run-down of where we are and how we’ve got here so far.”

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In a post on Boing Boing, he delves into the topic of designing computational objects.

“Mainstream ubicomp is coming back. The success of Internet services on mobile phones demonstrates that networked products can stretch beyond a laptop browser. The prices for CPUs have fallen below a threshold where incorporating them becomes a competitively viable business decision. Research labs have developed new technologies for embedding information processing in virtually anything. New businesses, such as FitBit, and Green Goose are based on the fact that processing is cheap, and you can include it in anything.

The idea of a single general-purpose “computation” device is fading into the same historical background as having a single steam engine to power a whole factory, or a single electric motor to power every appliance in a house. As it fades, designers and developers have to learn to design smart things that serve the interests, abilities, and needs of people. We must create a practice of ubiquitous computing user experience design.”

Dave Gray, who collaborates with Peter Morville on the Ubicomp Sketchbook, discusses the information shadow concept Kuniavsky introduced, and links it to Bruce Sterling‘s spime concept.

“The information shadow is the information that’s associated with an object such as its name, number, position in space and time, and so on. [...] Information shadows allow designers to make objects simpler, to reduce the size of interfaces and reduce the display requirements of an object.”

What exactly does context-aware computing mean? According to Genevieve Bell, director of Intel’s Interaction and Experience Research Group, context-aware computing refers to “technologies that are able to determine how you feel, who you’re friends with and what your preferences are to better deliver personalized information.”

At a recent event in New York City, Intel showed off four research projects that represent possible future everyday uses of context-aware computing.

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“Both the Internet of Things and augmented reality (AR) are hotly tipped computing trends and both are in their infancy. Where they intersect could be an engrossing area — with the visual and location-based aspect of augmented reality providing a real-time, real-place interface for the data being pumped out by objects. We’d be able to see not just whether a bus is behind a building but how many people are on it, whether it’s on time, where people are sitting on the bus, what the name of driver is and well, any other information you decided to put out there.”

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Stuart Karten: User-driven innovation [31:40]
Stuart Karten Design
The fast pace of technology development makes almost anything possible. The challenge that product developers face is implementing technologies in ways that meet customer needs and facilitate trust. In the hearing aid industry, technology allows hearing instruments to become smaller and smaller and opens up new possibilities for user interface. In taking Starkey’s hearing aids to the next level, Stuart Karten and his team at design and innovation consultancy SKD served as user advocates, making sure that Starkey’s advanced technology was developed into a family of products that meet the unique needs of 65- to 85-year-old end users. Karten will share the tools and strategies that SKD employed to maintain its focus on the end user throughout the product and interface development process.

Kim Goodwin: Convergent products, convergent process [37:57]
Author, Designing for the Digital Age
Interaction designers and industrial designers are kindred spirits in many ways, yet we tend to lean on somewhat different skills, biases, and design approaches. Many teams struggle with these differences, and the results of that struggle are visible in the telephones, remote controls, and even toaster ovens that drive us all a little bit crazy. So how do we get past atoms vs. pixels, while still benefiting from the different strengths of each discipline? No doubt there’s more than one answer, but the one that has worked for us is a convergent design process that incorporates both co-design and parallel design, but never sequential design in which one discipline drives the other. We’ll share that process—and the project management considerations that go with it—from both IxD and ID perspectives.

Dan Harden: Breaking through the noise [45:50]
Whipsaw
There are so many electronic devices, gadgets, and techy do-dads in this world, and quite frankly, most are junk. Every once in awhile one comes along and it’s different. It breaks through the noise. You dig it because it works flawlessly, it delivers real value, and it even has soul. Technology may enable it to BE, but design is what makes it sing. What are the factors that go into creating these kind of transcendent product experiences that resonate with soul? We will discuss this and share a few examples of how we interpret this illusive goal.

Mike Kuniavsky: Information as a material [34:03]
Author, Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design
We have passed the era of Peak MHz. The race in CPU development is now for smaller, cheaper, and less power-hungry processors. As the price of powerful CPUs approaches that of basic components, how information processing is used—and how to design with/for it—fundamentally changes. When information processing is this cheap, it becomes a material with which to design the world, like plastic, iron, and wood. This vision argues that most information processing in the near future will not be in some distant data center, but immediately present in our environment, distributed throughout the world, and embedded in things we don’t think of as computers (or even as “phones”).
In his talk Kuniavsky discusses what it means to treat information as a material, the properties of information as a design material, the possibilities created by information as a design material, and approaches for designing with information. Information as a material enables The Internet of Things, object-oriented hardware, smart materials, ubiquitous computing, and intelligent environments.

Julian Bleecker: Design fiction goes from props to prototypes [33:23]
Nokia / Near Future Laboratory
Prototypes are ways to test ideas—but where do those ideas come from? It may be that the path to better device design is best followed by creating props that help tell stories before prototypes designed to test technical feasibility. What I want to suggest in this talk is the way that design can use fiction—and fiction can use design—to help imagine how things can be designed just a little bit better.

Gretchen Anderson: Motivating healthy behaviors [21:49]
Punchcut
We’ve moved into an era where the gadgets we use affect our very being. Purpose-built medical devices are moving into the hands of consumers, and apps deliver healthcare over-the-air. This session looks at key concerns and best practices when designing medical devices and motivating healthy behaviors.

Jared Benson: One size does not fit all [20:57]
Punchcut
Are you inadvertently porting old UI paradigms to new contexts of use? Tomorrow’s devices need new affordances. I’ll share insights and considerations for designing distributed experiences across a range of converged devices.

Wendy Ju: Designing implicit interactions [24:31]
California College of Arts
Implicit interactions can interactive devices to help communicate cues and to provide feedback to make interactive devices easier, more effective and less infuriating. We’ll look at examples and design guidelines to help design good implicit interactions and avoid making inadvertent bad ones.

Ian Myles: More thought than you’d think [video not yet available]
meep
How to go a little deeper on strategic design decisions with surprising results.

Design Beyond the Glowing Rectangle: User experience design and research implications of the Internet of Things
Claire Rowland & Chris Browne, Fjord, UK
The key challenges we think UX designers will have to be prepared for, and some suggested ways to do things differently. Or, as Bruce Sterling said said, “It’s a good conceptual exercise to ponder “glowing screens” as a transitional technology. Just like “film” and the “boob tube.” What “film.” What “tube.” Where are they. We no longer have ‘em. We still talk about ‘em, but they don’t exist any more.

Beyond Co-Design: how open collaboration formats can enhance your design process
Johanna Kollmann & Franco Papeschi, Vodafone, UK

Telefónica introduces user experience lab
Telefónica’s research and development unit has presented its user experience lab. Via the user experience lab, Telefónica R&D uses the technique of co-creation, involving users in the process of products / services design. The lab includes all the elements that can be found in an ordinary household, with three main areas – living room with kitchen, study room and focus group area. These sections enable users to interact and conduct simultaneous and multiuser tests. The lab features an observation and recording system composed of 12 cameras with x20 zoom, microphones, as well as an observation room. The laboratory carries out an average of one test per week and the profile of the participants is very heterogeneous, depending on the product or service to be tested. The facility is used both for user testing (test of products and services, discussion groups and other usability techniques) as well as for workshops (analysis of results, product creation and conceptualization).

Internet of the Future
We at Telefónica I+D envision a future in which services based on communication will make up a digital world full of possibilities and improvements to people’s daily life and capabilities. These services will support modern society’s main challenges in addition to creating a more sustainable world. This Internet of the Future will combine an Internet of People, an Internet of Things, an Internet of Intelligence, an Internet of Services, and a ubiquitous, high-capacity network.
> Download report

Telefónica leading SmartSantander
Telefónica I+D will lead SmartSantander, a European project aimed at making the city of Santander the first Smart City in Europe. The project relies upon the Telefónica network capacities, and Telefónica will provide other services beyond mere connectivity. The first practical applications of this project – which was just officially presented to the city – will become available in June 2011.

Matt Webb – Managing Director at BERG (UK)
What comes after mobile
Matt Webb talks about how slightly smart things have invaded our lives over the past years. People have been talking about artificial intelligence for years but the promise has never really come through. Matt shows how the AI promise has transformed and now seems to be coming to us in the form of simple toys instead of complex machines. But this talks is about much more then AI, Matt also introduces chatty interfaces & hard math for trivial things.

Timo Arnall – Director at elastic space (Norway)
The design of networked products
Timo Arnall take us on a a very visual path where he talks about how we can use rich interaction with the world around us to create more meaningful experiences. Timo shares the most important learnings from the research work he’s done in the past years.

(via InfoDesign)

PC Magazine
Rattner describes the future of context-aware computing
The real question, Rattner said, is: Is the market ready for all of this context? Intel Fellow Genevieve Bell (who also led the Day Zero events) arrived onstage to explain that all users have “ambivalent and complex” relationships with technology, and that discovering what people truly love is the key to making context-aware computing work. The process involves conceptualizing and designing potential products, validating that in the real world, integrating the changes, and repeating the process until the users are satisfied. This will involve, Bell said, talking more to users, but also helping them understand that context and life are not different contexts—watching a baseball game, seeing a road sign, or using multiple devices in a living room are all examples of context that can help devices learn more about you and what you need. Bell said, “If we get context right—even a little bit right—it propels an entirely new set of experiences.”

Wired.com > Gadget Lab
How context-aware computing will make gadgets smarter
Small always-on handheld devices equipped with low-power sensors could signal a new class of “context-aware” gadgets that are more like personal companions. Such devices would anticipate your moods, be aware of your feelings and make suggestions based on them, says Intel.
Researchers have been working for more than two decades on making computers be more in tune with their users. That means computers would sense and react to the environment around them. Done right, such devices would be so in sync with their owners that the former will feel like a natural extension of the latter.

Computerworld
Intel: Future smartphones will be assistants, companions [alternate link]
Rattner said that as devices begin to understand the way their users live their lives, they will turn into personal assistants. Within five years, smartphones will be aware of the information on a user’s laptop, desktop and tablet systems, and they will use that knowledge to help guide them through their daily activities.

Fast Company
Coming soon: mind-reading cell phones
Eventually, Intel might actually produce truly psychic cell phones. Earlier this summer, we learned about Intel’s Human Brain Project–a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh that uses EEG, fMRI, and magnetoencephalography to figure out what a subject is thinking about based entirely on their neural activity pattern. The technology won’t be ready for at least a decade–and that’s just fine with us.

And there is much more…

“Experts say that the huge growth of the internet has in effect created a “permanent memory” online that can be searched by anyone. Embarrassing statements, and photographs, or angry attacks by spiteful ex-friends once faded away. But no longer. [...]

There are now many firms offering help in keeping people’s online history safe. They include companies and websites like Online Reputation Manager, Reputation Professor, Reputation Defender and Reputation Management Partners.”

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“We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.”

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The international conference, which is the conclusion and culmination of the Communia Thematic Network project (the European Thematic Network on the Digital Public Domain), was organised by the Politecnico of Torino’s NEXA Research Center for Internet and Society (that also coordinated the network) and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and aimed at defining a shared vision of the future of universities as knowledge institutions and identifying the main steps leading from vision to reality.

The event addressed questions such as: How is the role of universities as knowledge creating, sharing, and applying institutions going to change due to the Internet? How should universities use cyberspace to best implement their mission with respect to society? Taking into account the characteristics of the new generations of students, faculty and staff, how should the informational and the spatial (both physical and virtual) infrastructures of universities be shaped to improve learning, discovery, and engagement? What about the new opportunities to enhance the civic role of universities – who prepare people for citizenship and contribute to the public sphere – in our democratic societies?

Videos of all sessions are now online, although in a still somewhat rough format (they are now working at processing the videos further):

Monday 28 June
The first day of the conference covered the relevant history and traditions of universities, moved through the current state of play, and focused on the emerging landscape of universities, articulating both their changing role in society, the significant challenges these institutions are facing for the future and, more specifically, their role vis a vis the increasing commons of knowledge facilitated by the Internet.

Morning session (video link)

• Kick-off [00:12:56]: Juan Carlos de Martin, NEXA Center for Internet & Society, in conversation with Charles Nesson, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
• Keynote [00:53:20]: “Universities in the Age of the Internet” by Stefano Rodotà, University of Rome
• High Order Bit [01:46:00]: “Arduino, Open Source Hardware and Learning by Doing” by Massimo Banzi, tinker.it, arduino.cc
• Plenary [02:03:45]: “Digital Natives” with John Palfrey, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Marco de Rossi, Oilproject.org, and Urs Gasser, Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Afternoon session (video link)

• Plenary [00:01:19]: “Information Infrastructure” with Alma Swan, Key Perspectives Ltd., Stuart Shieber, Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Office of Scholarly Communication at Harvard University, and Martin Hall, Salford University, UK
• High Order Bit [01:27:13]: “African Universities as Knowledge Centers: Challenges and Opportunities” by Boubakar Barry, African Association of Universities
• Plenary [01:41:45]: Physical/Virtual Spatial Infrastructure” with Antoine Picon, Harvard University and Jef Huang, EPFL

Tuesday 29 June
The second day attempted cross-sectional reorientation, by examining universities’ emerging responsibilities as ‘horizontal’ themes, especially as they intersect with future challenges described in the first day’s ‘vertical’ tracks.

Morning session (video link)

• High Order Bit [00:01:12]: “Individual and social evolution: through digital gaming, out of the box” by Carlo Fabricatore, Initium Studios & University of Worcester
• Plenary [00:14:52]: “Universities as Civic Actors or Institutions” with Marco Santambrogio, University of Parma, Italy, Colin Maclay, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Maarten Simons, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, Jan Masschelein, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and Juan Carlos De Martin, NEXA Center for Internet & Society

Afternoon session (video link)

• Plenary [00:01:00]: “Universities as Platforms for Learning” with Catharina Maracke, Keio University, Japan, Marco De Rossi, Oilproject.org, Carlo Fabricatore, Initium Studios & University of Worcester, Delia Browne, Peer-2-Peer University, Stephan Vincent-Lancrin, OECD, and Jean Claude Guedon, University of Montreal
• High Order Bit [01:15:46] by Joy Ito, Creative Commons
• Plenary [01:33:11]: “Universities as Knowledge Creators” with Carlo Olmo, Politecnico di Torino, Phillippe Aigrain, Sopinspace, Janneke Adema, Coventry University, Mary Lee Kennedy, Harvard Business School, and Terry Fisher, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
• Plenary [02:49:56]: “In Search of the Public Domain” with Lucie Guibault, Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam, Patrick Peiffer, Luxcommons, Jonathan Gray, Open Knowledge Foundation, Sirin Tekinay, Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey, Ignasi Labastida, University of Barcelona, Philippe Aigrain, Sopinspace, and Paolo Lanteri, WIPO

Wednesday 30 June
The third day combined the three tracks and the cross-sectional issues with an orientation towards solutions and next steps.

Morning session (video link)

• High Order Bit [00:01:08]: “Why Academia Needs to Rediscover the Commons” by Jean Claude Guedon, University of Montreal
• High Level Keynote [00:28:00]: “Digital Culture, Network Culture, and What Comes Afterward” by Bruce Sterling
• High Order Bit [01:35:44]: “From Elites, To Masses: Drivers of Excellence in Communication, And Participation” by David Orban, Humanity+ & Singularity University
• Student session [01:49:58]: “Public universities, public education: From the Bologna Process to Cyberspace”, chaired by Chiara Basile, Politecnico di Torino

Afternoon session (video link)

• Final Session: “Synthesis and Proposals” with Stephan Vincent-Lancrin, OECD, Francesco Profumo, Rector Politecnico di Torino, Mario Calabresi, La Stampa, Herbert Burkert, University of St. Gallen, Jafar Javan, UN Staff College, Charles Nesson, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Chiara Basile, Politecnico di Torino, Sirin Tekinay, Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey, Juan Carlos De Martin, NEXA Center for Internet & Society, and Urs Gasser, Berkman Center for Internet & Society