Ubiquitous Computing

On May 7, 2013 I attended an event entitled “The connected Home, TV, and Living Room” sponsored by MIT and Verizon at the Yotel Hotel in New York. The talks consisted of 4 startup representatives who Verizon named “Ninja Innovators”… this is I am assuming open to interpretation. Presenters were allowed a total of 3 minutes each, or so. Enough time to give you an idea of what their ideas were and share a URL, but not enough to totally grasp the incentive behind the work and how users find their concepts engaging, useful, and possibly sustainable.

The 4 Ninja Innovators were as follows:

iMediaShare.tv provides video distribution over IP, using singular or a combination of multiple devices. The concept was borne out of the simple question: “Can we just beam it to the TV?”

SIMULmedia is an advertising startup that practices targeted advertising as you watch TV, reaching an audience at scale looking at region frequency curves. They called this “the connected living room of the future”. (hmmm…)

KISI systems (here’s my favorite) allows users to control their multi home units with their phones, packing keys and wallet into the phone with the aid of an app suite. This means users can control their TV, doors (including the garage door), etc. Kisi enables this shift by building on top of existing infrastructures within users homes (i.e. alarm system) rather than forcing new infrastructures to replace old ones which can be costly. It does that by providing a Kisi toolkit. Their tag line seemed to be something like that: Kisi is your doorman who knows it all.

Get Blue is the latest Social TV app initiative allowing users to share reactions about content watched with friends on Facebook and Twitter. This app is about discovering, sharing, and the second screen. It works with partners that populate the screens with exclusive TV content; this way re-imagining discovery on the first and second screens.

In “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace: Some ethical guidelines for user experience in ubiquitous-computing settings,” Adam Greenfield (2004) delineated the fine line existing between: on the one hand, artifacts that neglect their users and the consequential impact of their dissemination in society; and, on the other hand, responsible, compassionate, and sensitive user-experience design that offers convivial products and services.

Because ubicomp is, by definition, present everywhere and at-all-times, it may either interfere or facilitate contextual actions, and hence change the ways in which we act upon and perceive the environment. For Greenfield, “we” –ubicomp designers– “are uniquely positioned to affect the emergence of this technological milieu for the better.” We can partake in the paradigm shift from technologies that provide uncertainty, insecurity, and that violate privacy, to designing technologies that empower users, and that support ethical, social, and environmental well-being.

It is my understanding that Greenfield’s aim is twofold: first, to encourage user experience designers to provide humane tools for society by copiously following a guideline that considers the social and environmental repercussions of man-made things; and second, to promote the application of ubiquitous systems as a practice that could empower users in their everyday actions.

source:
Greenfield, Adam. “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace: Some ethical guidelines for user experience in ubiquitous-computing settings.” (Published 2004/12/01) (Last visited November 2010)

The term affordance was coined by J. J. Gibson in 1977. He borrowed the word from ‘afford’ to mean: perceived elements in the environment that explain how the environment behaves. Gibson’s affordance includes both the environment and the animal; which is to say that it explains how both environment and animal affect one another’s behavior as they adapt to fluctuations in time and space.

According the Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown (1996), “peripheral information” extends the notion of “affordances” to describe action enabling technologies that are reachable, yet on the periphery of perception and therefore encalming. Designing for calm technology would then mean to provide non-invasive tools or cues for action that encalm while stimulating the senses.

source: Weiser, Mark; & John Seely Brown. “The Coming Age of Calm Technology.” Xerox PARC: October 5, 1996.

In 1991, Mark Weiser defined ubiquitous computing (which he also calls “embodied virtuality”, as opposed to virtual reality) as invisible and indistinguishable from the “fabric of everyday life”; that is, from human behavior. Which is to say that ubiquitous computing aims at providing humane tools with which beings can continue dealing with their world in very much the same behavioral ways. Embodied virtuality, according to Weiser, will be non-invasive, and will enhance and facilitate human(e) interaction. However, the examples given by Weiser (granted, that was 20 years ago) revolve around interactive tabs, pads, boards that help users in remote locations communicate on humane behavioral levels and at different appropriate scales of needs. Those tools adapt to human behavior and are non-obstructive, enabling devices to interact with one another.
What is curious in his prediction that “Computer access will penetrate all groups in society”, is that it is far from being the case. Which society was he referring to? Or was this an abstract concept? Did he mean that computation has the potential of offering computer access to all groups in this unknown ‘society’; in other words, “hundreds of computers per room” –tabs, pads, and boards?

13 years later, Malcolm McCullough (2004) suggested that not only is ubiquitous computing a way of turning computers into more humane interfaces for interaction, but ‘computing’ and ‘architecture’ are now closely related and determine new spatial content for action. His approach extends the previously defined scope of ubiquity to include buildings, information, and computation, that enable appropriate delivery of information for embodied interaction; that is, context-dependent interaction –situated interaction. “Interactivity changed the role of technology.” Technology is now interactive, and deals one the one hand with expectations (both of technology’s own role in society and of users’ expectations of what its role might be), and on the other hand with contextual participation (or the creation of and co-engagement in an “ambient social infrastructure” –”situations”).

If ubiquitous means anywhere and everywhere, anytime and at-all-times, and computing involves some level of digital response, then ubiquitous computing would have to include digitally constructed environments and/or contexts that respond to pre-programmed ‘types’ of actions occurring anywhere and everywhere, anytime and at-all-times (situated actions).

Perhaps that’s not the whole story… What is, then, involved in ubiquitous computing? What is clear is that it very much depends on the context of use and the content of that which is stored (data). And, ubiquity would seem to have two connotations or implications on the way we deal with our everyday world: a) computation is embedded in the architecture around us; it is invisible and controlled by others –it may collect data for good (enabling a special purpose need) or evil (which violates our personal needs for identity, security, and privacy); b) it is highly-visible and could be single-user, or multi-user benefits, and promotes a faster, easier, and efficient way of using technological tools or engaging in interactive spaces in order to better manage our everyday activities through situated embodied interaction.

source:

McCullough, Malcolm. “Interactive Futures.” Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts: 2004.

Weiser, Mark. “The Computer for the 21st Century.” September 1991.