Pervasive Socio-Technical Fabric

In 2011, now 20 years after M. Weiser’s “The Computer for the 21st Century” (1991), the vision impacting the evolution of Pervasive Computing is still the claim for an intuitive, unobtrusive and distraction free interaction with omnipresent, technology-rich environments. In an attempt of bringing interaction “back to the real world” after an era of keyboard and screen interaction (Personal computing), computers are being understood as secondary artefacts, embedded and operating in the background, whereas the set of all physical objects present in the environment are understood as the primary artefacts, the “interface”. Over it’s more than two decades of evolution, the field has been undergoing three generations of research challenges fertilizing Pervasive Computing: The first generation aiming towards autonomic systems and their adaptation was driven by the availability of technology to connect literally everything to everything (Connectedness, 1991-2005). The second generation inherited from the upcoming context recognition and knowledge processing technologies (Awareness, 2000-2007), e.g. context-awareness, self-awareness, resource-awareness, etc. Finally, a third generation, building upon connectedness and awareness, attempts to exploit the (ontological) semantics of Pervasive Computing systems, services and interactions (i.e. giving meaning to situations and actions, and “intelligence” to systems) (Smartness, 2004-). While Pervasive Computing research has its success in the first, partly also in the second generation, the third generation is evolving as we speak. The FP7 FET proactive project PANORAMA (FET proactive/Goal 8.3: Pervasive Adaptation) picked up on the challenge of identifying the new trails of Pervasive Computing research, involving some 240 of the most distinguished researchers in the field in a solicitation process that lasted for about three years. The result of this process is manifested in the Pervasive Adaptation Research Agenda Book (www.perada.eu/research-agenda), which is presented in this article and the respective fett11 session. © Selection and peer-review under responsibility of FET11 conference organizers and published by Elsevier B.V.