Reading-StephanieSaltzman

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 * Responsive Environments and Artifacts: DISAPPEARANCE - Readings **
 * Reading: ** The Computer of the 21st Century by Mark Weiser
 * Discussion Mediator: **Stephanie Saltzman __saltzman@gsd.harvard.edu__


 * Reading Summery (1000 words): **

 The Computer for the 21st Century by Mark Weiser

Mark Weiser, chief technology officer at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (Parc), is the Father of **Ubiquitous Computing**, a term he coined in 1988. Ubiquitous Computing refers to a future in which invisible computers, embedded in everyday objects, replace PCs.)

Writing was the first information technology. The ability to represent spoken language symbolically for long-term storage freed information from the limits of individual memory. Today this technology is ubiquitous. It does not require active attention; the information is transmitted and ready for use at a glance.Personal computers remain largely in a world of their own. They are only approachable through complex jargon that has nothing to do with the tasks for which people use computers, like when scribes had to know as much about making ink or baking clay as they did about writing.New ways of thinking about computers, one that takes into account the human work and allows the computers themselves to vanish into the background, are needed. Such a disappearance is a fundamental consequence not of technology by of human psychology. Whenever people learn something sufficiently well, they cease to be aware of it. Only when things disappear in this way are we freed to use then without thinking and so to focus beyond them on new goals. Today’s multimedia machine makes the computer screen into a demanding focus of attention rather than allowing it to fade into the background. The opposite of Ubiquitous Computing  is the Virtual Reality (attempts to make a world inside the computer). It is only a map, not a territory. It works by focusing on an enormous apparatus that simulates the world rather than on invisibly enhancing the world that already exists.

Mark Weiser writes of “embodied virtuality”, the process of drawing computers out of their electronic shells. A car is the perfect example because many cheap, small, efficient electric motors are made into a single machine. The driver might be able to discern whenever he activates a motor, but there would be not point to it.

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Ubiquitous computers in machines will be interconnected in a ubiquitous network. Focus on devices that transmit and display information more directly. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There are two issues of crucial importance: LOCATION and SCALE.

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Location: Ubiquitous computers must know where they are. If a computer knows merely what room it is in, it can adapt its behavior in significant ways without requiring even a hint of artificial intelligence.

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Size: TABS, PADS, and BOARDS


 * 1) TABS, expand on the usefulness of existing inch-scale computers, such as pocket calculator and pocket organizer. Also take the function that no computer performs today à Active Badges (can identify themselves to receivers placed throughout a building). Also, used to arrange computer-based projects in an area. Carrying a project to different office for discussion is as simple as gathering up tabs; the associated programs and files can be called up on any terminal. Can animate objects previously inert.
 * 2) PADS: “scratch computers” (scrap paper) grabbed and used anywhere; no individualized identity or importance. Use a real desk as you would spread out paper.
 * 3) BOARDS: screens and bulliten boards, aso as an electronic bookcase from which one might download texts to pads or tab. To manipulate the display, users pick up a piece of wireless electronic “chack” that can work either in contact with the surface or from a distance.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Technology required for ubiquitous computing: cheap, low-power computers that include equally convenient displays, software for ubiquitous application sand a network that ties them all together.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“By pushing computers into the background, embodied virtuality will make individuals more aware of the people on the other ends of their computer links”. Ubiquitous computers reside in the human world and pose no barrier to personal interactions. Like the personal computer, ubiquitous computing will produce nothing fundamentally new, but by making everything faster and easier to do, with less strain and fewer mental gymnastics, it will transform what is apparently possible.”


 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333px;">Questions and Challenges: **

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">What are the boundaries for ubiquitous computers?

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Contemporary human-computer interaction models, whether command-line, menu-driven, or GUI-based, are inappropriate and inadequate to the ubiquitous case. This suggests that the “natural” interaction paradigm appropriate to fully robust ubiquitous computing has yet to emerge – although there is recognition that in many ways we already live in an ubicomp world (mobile phones, GPS, and interactive whiteboards. )

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Today’s technological landscape is quite radically different than that of the late 1980s when Weiser was outlining the ubiquitous computer vision. The idea that today, we are postulating much the same proximate future vision of ubicomp that movitvated Weiser is somewhat surprising. Given that the last 20 yrs have seen such radical transformations of technological infrastructure worldwide, Why is our vision of the future still the same as Weiser’s and second why has it not yet come to pass?

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Infrastructure of ubiquitous computing? Messiness. Mobile telephone offers widespread coverage, but is neither ubiquitous nor truly seamless. Incompatible standards, spotty regional coverage, etc.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The ubicomp world was meant to be clean and orderly; it turns out instead to be a messy one. Rather than being invisible or unobtrusive, unicomp devices are hightly present, visible and branded. Characterized by improvisation and appropriation, by techinologies lashed together and maintained in synch only through considerable effort


 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Documentation of Class Discussions and Responses to Questions and Challenges: **

The idea of computers as "disposable" object. For a <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">Ubiquitous Computing world to come to fruition, computers can't be valued as an object, but for their engagement potential. Branding, like Apple, ties an individual to an object. Computers are personalized, and not blank slates. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">The social component is key. But the virtual world is compelling. An embodied second self. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">App culture more crucial than hardware. Hardware functions as disposable. Everyone wants the latest iphone, even if their current phone functions perfectly. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">Iphone/Apple vs. Android/App. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">Specificity <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> of software performance. Design for hardware/software "openness". <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">Influence of market forces and perception. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">"white cube" vs. Apple's neat and clean "black box" <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">neutral <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> objects to be reprogrammed by users. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">types of interactions. graphical user interfaces. inputs and output conditions. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">