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The motivations of ubiquitous computing: revisiting the ideas behind and beyond the prototypes

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Abstract

Ask anyone in the field, “What is ubiquitous computing?” and you’ll get a different answer from each person. The one definition of ubicomp that nearly everyone points to (as an almost obligatory citation) is Mark Weiser’s 1991 Scientific American article: “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” While this vision was clearly inspiring, many readers miss the point that ubicomp was not simply a dream of putting computers everywhere. Weiser was deeply concerned about what it would be like to live in a world of ubiquitous computing. Those human issues were compressed to a single paragraph of his Scientific American article, citing Herbert Simon, Michael Polanyi, James Gibson, Hans Georg Gadamer, and Martin Heidegger. By unpacking this dense paragraph, tracing connections between ideas through his library archives, and interviewing many of Weiser’s professional and personal influencers from the early days of ubicomp (late 1980s at Xerox PARC), we get a sense for the philosophical history behind ubiquitous computing. This broader understanding of the influencers and ideas can serve as a source for inspiration for exploration and innovation that refocuses upon the first-person human experience of ubicomp systems: (1) leveraging human experience below the level of focused, conscious attention, (2) bringing back embodiment, and (3) simultaneously supporting and getting out of the way of human interpersonal interactions and relationships.

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Notes

  1. A technological action frame is a "multi-dimensional composite understandings—constituted and circulated in language—that legitimate high levels of investment for potential users, and form the core ideas about how a technology works and how a future based on its usage should be envisioned"… "Bijker [28] lists the major dimensions of technological frames as goals, key problems, problem-solving strategies, requirements to be met by problem solutions, current theories, tacit knowledge, perceived substitution function, user practices and exemplary artifacts. Taken together, these dimensions constitute the meaning of a particular technology and frame it in specific ways" [27]. This work includes some, but not all, of those dimensions.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks go to Frederick Turner and (the late) Clifford Nass for their guidance and support in conducting this research; without them, none of this would have ever begun. This project was made possible by the Stanford Library Special Collections archives and the generous people who participated in interviews, especially John Seely Brown, David Goldberg, Marina LaPalma, Vicky Reich, Bill Schilit, and Roy Want.

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  1. Psychology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, USA

    Leila Takayama

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Takayama, L. The motivations of ubiquitous computing: revisiting the ideas behind and beyond the prototypes. Pers Ubiquit Comput 21, 557–569 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-017-1002-8

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