Everyware_ The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing - Adam Greenfield [102]
It is axiomatic in the field of biofeedback that "control follows awareness"—you cannot seek to steer some process, that is, until you become conscious of it. My hope in writing this book is to foster a wider awareness of the deep issues raised by everyware, so we can together make the decisions about its emergence that we so urgently need to. And my fundamental point is that the outcome does not have to be something that simply happens to us. To the degree that we, the users and consumers of ubiquitous computing, educate ourselves and take action correspondingly, we get to choose the outcome.
When the stakes are as high as they are here, we must interrogate without mercy the value propositions we're presented and adopt only those ubiquitous products and services that really do improve our lives. In life, on balance, I come down ever so slightly on the side of hope: I think that given enough time and accurate enough information, people eventually do make wise decisions.
The trouble is that in the present situation, time and useful insight are both in short supply. While we have a window of time left in which to consider the manifold challenges of everyware, and to articulate a meaningful response to them, that window is closing. Ubiquitous computing appears in more places, in more guises, and in more ambitious conceptions with every passing day, and we've barely begun to confront it in the depth of understanding it demands.
The real struggle will be in finding an appropriate place for ubiquitous computing in our lives—reserving it for those applications where it will be able to do us the most good, while ensuring that our more intimate choices and moments remain autonomous and unmediated. The English proverb has it that "the devil is in the details." The architect Mies van der Rohe famously restated this in more optimistic terms; in his version, the details of implementation are precisely where one might go looking for God. In the case of everyware, we can only hope that Mies knew what he was talking about.
New York City/Tokyo/Margaux, FR/Berlin
June 2005—January 2006
Index
A
addressing scheme
ambient informatics, See also informatic systems
ambientROOM
ambients
analog devices
analog standards
anonymity
apple Computer
appliances
appropriation
audio
earcons
speech output
spoken notifications
voice-recognition
audio channel
audio cues
B
badges, identification
bar-codes
Bellotti paper
biometric devices/sensors
Blink payment system
Bluetooth technology
boards. See also keyboards
BodyMedia
border crossings
buildings
door sensors
flooring sensors
furniture in
hotels
identification badges
indoor environment
smart
wall screens
business cards
businesses
C
calm technology
cell phones
cities
maps/navigation. See maps
transportation systems
ubiquitous
cognitive overload
computation
computing. See also personal computing
physical
ubiquitous. See ubicomp; ubiquitous systems
wearable
consumers
context
conventions
D
data
latent
metadata
routing
data mining
DataTiles project
design documents
designers
developers
Dick, Phillip K.
digital devices/services
digital tools
display technologies. See screens
doctors
door sensors
E
earcons
economics
eldercare
energy management control systems (EMCS)
engineers
ethical issues
event heap
everyware. See also ubicomp; ubiquitous systems
arrival of
context
design of
ethical issues
guidelines for
human body and
influences
multiplicity
overview
preparing for
problems/inconveniences caused by
reasons for emergence of
safeguards
sites/uses for
standards/guidelines for
vs. personal computing
exformation
F
flooring, smart
form factors
Fukasawa, Naoto
furniture, smart
G
GAUDI system
gestural interfaces
GPS (Global Positioning System)
H
haptic interfaces
HDTV technology
hotels
human body See also people; users human-computer interaction (HCI)
I
IBM
identification