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At the Internet Librarian Conference earlier this week I was fascinated by a presentation—Ubiquitous Computing and Library Futures—given by Chris Peters, Technical Analyst at MaintainIT, and Michael Porter, Community Project Manager at WebJunction. They defined Ubicomp as “a model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities.” Essentially this would mean computing and information access happening where and when we need it, enabled by calm technology that is everywhere but is effectively invisible. Doesn’t that sound lovely?
UbiComp happens at the scale of you as a person, but is also completely embedded in your room or building, and is highly personalized, adaptive, and anticipatory. Chris gave examples of context aware objects ranging from scary, powerful pens to smart toilets. These everyday objects have location awareness, social awareness, time awareness, and history. For example, a pen that can keep track of the materials used to make it, the energy transferred to it, the places it has been, and the things it’s done on your behalf, while understanding its role in your workflow. Another example was of a picture hanging on your wall that displays a crowd that gets larger as your email box fills up! Somehow, I don’t think that would keep me calm though.
Biotelemetry was also discussed, involving computers that keep track of your vital signs which are embedded in watches, wheelchairs, shirts, or even toilets, wirelessly linked to doctors and your medical records. A project involving biofeedback involved the creation of an emotional map of San Francisco, collected from people who wore biofeedback stress monitors. This means not only can we find the most stressful intersections, but we could also create an emotional map of the library to determine the most stressful locations or time periods, the stressful parts of your library’s website, research processes or computer classes. Other library applications mentioned included location-based reference, anticipatory reference, information therapy, and even the library as a future on-demand community manufacturing center. Chris’ links are at: http://del.icio.us/cpetersc72/ubicomp. Thanks for a great session!! Still waiting for the flying cars to become available (how is it the Jetsons are still futuristic?).
--Stephanie Gerding, MaintainIT Contributor
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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Flying Cars
Nice!