The Origins of Ubiquitous Computing Research at PARC in the Late 1980s

I late 1987, Bob Sprague, Richard Bruce, and other members of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) Electronics and Imaging Laboratory (EIL) proposed fabricating large, wall-sized, flatpanel computer displays from large-area amorphous silicon sheets. It was thought at the time that this technology might also permit these displays to function as input devices for electronic pens and also for the scanning of images (by placing documents directly against the displays). Quickly, members of other labs were willingly drawn into designing both the hardware and software for this new kind of computer system—one that seemed to honor the transparent ease of use of a traditional whiteboard while extending its power computationally, particularly when networked with other such devices. The research vision these “computer walls” inspired was far different from the then-current “one person–one desktop computer” paradigm and opened up to researchers at PARC the idea of spreading computers ubiquitously, but invisibly, throughout the environment. At the same time, the anthropologists of the Work Practices and Technology area within PARC, led by Lucy Suchman, were observing the way people really used technology, not just the way they claimed to use technology. To some of the technologists at PARC, myself included, their observations led toward thinking less about particular features of a computer—such as random access memory and number of pixels or megahertz—and much more about the detailed situational use of the technology. In particular, how were computers embedded within the complex social framework of daily activity, and how did they interplay with the rest of our densely woven physical environment (also known as “the real world”)?