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What is ubiquitous computing or "ubicomp," other than a geeky buzz-phrase for smart objects, "things that think"? In his provocative new book Everyware (freely excerpted here and here), interface designer and MeFite Adam Greenfield provides a thoughtful meditation on one of the digital world's most resonant hopes for the future, encompassing everything from pervasive RFID-chipping, Orwellian surveillance, and a humbly practical magic wand to a "coming age of calm technology."
posted by digaman on Jun 19, 2006 - 29 comments

If indeed information technology is seeping out of cyberspace at a rate that will soon immerse us in a world of smart furniture and spime wranglers, I think we have bigger things to worry about than disambiguating the terminology (user experience and opting out come to mind). MeFi's own Adam Greenfield weighs in with his first book, Everyware.
posted by mikepop on Feb 21, 2006 - 2 comments

In the early 1990s Mark Weiser at Xerox PARC coined the term ubiquitous computing or "ubicomp" to describe the way he thought computing ought to look in the post-PC era: computers would be invisible, "in the woodwork everywhere around us." Ubicomp has been discussed here a few times before (in fact a MeFite went on to write a book about it)...but with a flood of manufacturers racing to offer up their versions of the so-called digital home, is Weiser's vision moving closer to reality?
posted by Shanachie on Jan 11, 2006 - 23 comments

Once the stuff of academic and corporate experimentation, ubiquitous computation (or "ubicomp") is gearing up for its commercial debut in the very near future. Along the lines of ostensibly "nanotechnological" pants, the reality of ubicomp as made manifest in consumer products may fall somewhat short of the prognostications: buying a personal communicator designed to work seamlessly within a ubicomp context is not the same thing as living in and with a truly pervasive network.

But already there are signs that the ubiquitous visions beloved by the corporate players and enshrined in their hype are coming into being. So which do you think it'll be? Guardian angel or inescapable, panoptical prison? Neither? Maybe both? I have a sinking feeling we're going to find out, one way or another.
posted by adamgreenfield on Sep 24, 2004 - 8 comments