Everyware_ The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing - Adam Greenfield [48]
Their long pedigree in science fiction merely extends the earlier tradition; folklore is replete with caves that open at a spoken command, swords that can be claimed only by a single individual, mirrors that answer with killing honesty when asked to name the fairest maiden in the land, and so on. Why, then, should anyone be surprised when we try to restage these tales, this time with our technology in the central role? Everyware is simply speaking to something that has lain dormant within us for much of modernity and played an overt, daily role in our lives for a very long time before that.
This is perhaps the most poignant factor driving the development of everyware, but as we've seen, it is far from the only one. From the crassest of motives to the noblest, there are so many powerful forces converging on the same set of technical solutions that their eventual realization truly does seem inevitable, no matter how we may quail at the determinism implied.
We will get to make meaningful choices about the precise shape of their appearance in the world, however—but only if we are smarter and more prudent than we have been about previous technologies. The next section will cover some of the issues we will need to keep foremost in mind if we want to make these crucial decisions wisely.
Section 4.
What are the Issues We Need to be Aware of?
If we have by now concluded that some kind of everyware does seem inevitable, the precise form that it will take in our lives is still contingent, open to change.
What are some of the issues we need to be aware of, in order to make the sort of wise decisions that will shape its emergence in congenial ways?
Thesis 34
Everyware insinuates itself into transactions never before subject to technical intervention.
Even if you yourself are not a connoisseur of gourmet bathing experiences, you may be interested to learn that the Brazilian company IHOUSE last year offered for sale something it called the Smart Hydro "intelligent bathtub."
The Smart Hydro is a preview of the experience that awaits us in the fully networked home, at least at the high end of the market. It really puts the bather in the driver's seat, as it were, giving its user access to a range of preference settings, from the essentials of water temperature and level to treats like "bath essence or foam, a variety of hydromassage programs and even light intensity." It can even be programmed to fill itself and then call you on your mobile phone mid-commute, just to let you know that your bath will be ready for you the moment you step through the door. (Of course it will be "[kept] temperature controlled until you arrive home.")
But you already knew how to draw a bath, didn't you? And you've somehow survived this far in life without the help of automated calls from the bathroom infrastructure. In fact, learning how to manage your bathtub's preference settings is probably not on the list of things you most want to do with your time—not when you've pretty much had a handle on the situation since the age of five or six.
Especially as a consequence of its insinuation into everyday life, everyware appears in all kinds of transactions that have never before been subject to highly technical intervention. Ubicomp advocate Mike Kuniavsky acknowledges this in his "Smart Furniture Manifesto": in his own words, endowing furniture and other everyday things with digital intelligence "can introduce all kinds of complexity and failure modes that don't currently exist." (I'd argue that you can replace the "can" in that sentence with "demonstrably will.")
The consequences of such complexification extend beyond bathing, or the similarly simple but profound pleasures of hearth and table, to implicate a further set of experiences that tend to be the most meaningful and special to us.
Take friendship. Current social-networking applications, like Orkut or Friendster, already offer us digital profiles