Learning Technology Research Taskforce: Middleware for Pervasive and Proactive Computing

This paper explores proactive and pervasive computing, and looks at the challenges faced by middleware for pervasive computing. Pervasive or ubiquitous computing is a vast area of research that has implications for networking, applications, development environments, user interfaces, remote sensing, and even the form of what we today know as a computer. It seeks to connect computers to one another and to their environment, and insulate users from mundane integration tasks while empowering them through proactive services. This paper focuses primarily on middleware for pervasive computing, and various aspects of the pervasive computing environment that affect its design. It proposes a number of hands-on pilot projects, some of which directly address intransigent real world problems for which we currently have imperfect (or nonexistent) solutions. It also takes a brief look at the as-yet unresolved privacy issues surrounding some elements of the pervasive computing infrastructure.