Transcript Slides

Ubiquitous Computing Visions
Jason I. Hong
jasonh at cs cmu edu
Original Ubicomp Vision
Tabs, Pads, Boards
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1991, few years after Mac
– Before MS Windows, GPS, cell phones, and web took off
Original Ubicomp Vision
Main Points
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Push tech into the physical world
– New devices leveraging familiar metaphors
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Push tech into the background, invisible
– Analogy to literacy
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Artificial intelligence not needed
Location sensing can be very powerful
– Automatic diary, auto door open, call forwarding
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Lots of very cheap displays (inch, foot, yard)
– Lots of new interaction techniques
– Waving, writing, walking into rooms
Original Ubicomp Vision
Some Critiques
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Cost
– Very expensive infrastructure
– Cheaper, intermediate forms of ubicomp?
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How do things get pushed into background?
– Sort of assumes it will just happen
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Understandability
– How to design so people can use things?
– What is active? What isn’t?
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Too optimistic?
– Viruses? Phishing? Hackers?
– Will anytime access to info help or exacerbate overload?
Synthetic Serendipity
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Vinge is well-known sci-fi writer
– Story set in year 2020
– Like a low-fidelity prototype
– Has to be somewhat plausible vision of future
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Some interesting points
– How Google, Ebay, FedEx used in future
– Not real cyborgs, but close to it
• Real-time Google
– Information overlays on top of real world
• Pipes, nav arrows, online games in world
– Other services
• Real-world Tivo, Friends of Privacy, Silent Messaging
Synthetic Serendipity
Some Critiques of Ubicomp
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Will wearable computers take off?
Will this make everyone into INTJ personality type?
Will it be harder to differentiate “reality”?
– Live in “reality” or a world we created?
– A Matrix of our own making?
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Cost
– 15 years between now and then
– Moore’s law enough? How to get things out there?
Another Vision of Ubicomp
We will reach a point where the combination of
powerful processors, limitless data-storage capacity,
ubiquitous sensor networks, and deeply embedded
user interfaces will create a bond between human
and machine “so intimate that users may reasonably
be considered superhumanly intelligent.” - Vernor Vinge