| Ubiquitous Computing |
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HISTORY The late Philip K. Dick novel Ubik , which envisioned a future in which everything -- from doorknobs to toilet-paper holders, were intelligent and connected. Currently, the art is not as mature as Weiser hoped, but a considerable amount of development is taking place. The MIT Media Lab has also carried on significant research in this field, which they call '' Things That Think '' {Link without Title} . American writer Adam Greenfield coined the term Everyware to describe technologies of ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing, ambient informatics and tangible media. The article All watched over by machines of loving grace contains the first use of the term. Greenfield also used the term as the title of his book ''Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing'' (ISBN 0321384016). EXAMPLES The most direct descendants of the concept include products from the company Ambient Devices , which has produced an "orb", a "dashboard", and a "weather beacon", devices that receive data from a Wireless Network and unobtrusively provide it to a person's peripheral attention, with a lighted globe (the orb) quietly signalling (e.g.) Stock Market movement, a similar lighted cube (the beacon) signalling weather, and a set of analog meters signalling a variety of user-configurable data. Another example is the Datafountain , an internet enabled water fountain used to display money currency rates, created by Koert van Mensvoort. The heritage of these devices lies in experimental devices created at Xerox PARC , notably a simply piece of string attached to a Stepper Motor , itself attached to a simple Integrator attached to the office LAN . When the LAN was busy, the motor would step, and the string would twitch, yielding a ''peripherally noticeable'' indication of network traffic. Weiser called this ''calm technology'' {Link without Title} . Some would consider GPS -equipped automobiles that give interactive driving directions or RFID store checkout systems to be examples of this kind of system, but these are far from the type of application that were imagined at either PARC or MIT. CURRENT RESEARCH Ubiquitous computing encompasses a wide range of research topics, including Distributed Computing , Mobile Computing , Sensor Networks , Human-computer Interaction , and Artificial Intelligence . Research labs are taking interest in developing this field are listed Here . RESOURCES Some news sites are recording commercial and academic developments:
Notable conferences in the field include:
Magazines committed to pervasive computing: See also EXTERNAL LINKS
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