Living in a ubiquitous world.

On by Ubiquitous computing with its vision of a world augmented by interconnected computational devices capable of understanding and responding to human activities and actions is one that has excited many researchers. As we face widespread ubiquitous computing with billions of devices shaping the very fabric of an active world, we need to ask what will this world be like to inhabit? How will we, each of us, experience and make sense of it? How will we communicate and work with others and how might we make sense of the nature of this world? Making sense of the world we inhabit is central to the human experience. From an early age, we interact with the world around us and, in doing so, develop a practical everyday understanding of how our actions affect the environment and vice versa. We readily differentiate between streets, offices, churches and homes, modifying our behaviour to take account of the nature of these places. When necessary we reconfigure the world to meet our needs and support particular activities. In doing so, we draw upon a basic understanding of how our built environment is constructed. Our tacit knowledge of the nature of our everyday world shapes our interaction with each other and the artefacts within it. The challenge is how might we realize a future ubiquitous world that is as readily understood by those who inhabit it? In order to so, it is imperative that we mature from our current practices of ubiquitous computing towards a multidisciplinary science of ubiquity by developing models, theories and associated engineering principles that allow us to analyse and guide the construction of a ubiquitous world. However, as we shape a science of ubiquity to analyse and construct the technology inherent within a future ubiquitous world, we might actually undermine our human ability to understand the world we inhabit. A real risk emerges that professional engineers and scientists develop tools to allow them to make sense of a ubiquitous computing world but the everyday citizen is left confused and frustrated by this world. A critical imperative is to ensure that we develop principles and concepts that are readily understood by all. This is a challenge that requires us to reason all the way from sensors to society and one that we need to collectively work upon. I would argue that we need to place user engagement and understanding at the centre of this endeavour. Our current research approach is to prototype relatively small-scale bespoke ubiquitous computing installations and, through empirical observation, understand their use in order to shape the nature of the underlying technologies. This practice-based approach to user-centred ubiquitous computing represents a useful first step. However, as we face the challenge of widespread ubiquitous computing, we need to establish a human science of Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A (2008) 366, 3837–3838 doi:10.1098/rsta.2008.0146 Published online 4 August 2008