Ethical Challenges of Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous Computing, an idea introduced by Mark Weiser, and often bracketed with slight modifications under the concepts of Pervasive Computing or Ambient Intelligence, imagines in the extreme case the entire mesosphere saturated by information and communication technologies (ICT). All of the essays of this issue probe the practices, ideologies, and power relations of UbiComp development. They note both the successes and the failures of a variety of ethical and theoretical approaches to UbiComp and they offer alternative approaches. Thus they provide a much-needed intervention into the creation of new forms of subjectivity, awareness, and power.