Everyware_ The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing - Adam Greenfield [6]
What is that experience? It involves a diverse ecology of devices and platforms, most of which have nothing to do with "computers" as we've understood them. It's a distributed phenomenon: The power and meaning we ascribe to it are more a property of the network than of any single node, and that network is effectively invisible. It permeates places and pursuits that we've never before thought of in technical terms. And it is something that happens out here in the world, amid the bustle, the traffic, the lattes, and gossip: a social activity shaped by, and in its turn shaping, our relationships with the people around us.
And although too many changes in the world get called "paradigm shifts"—the phrase has been much abused in our time—when we consider the difference between our experience of PCs and the thing that is coming, it is clear that in this case no other description will do. Its sense of a technological transition entraining a fundamental alteration in worldview, and maybe even a new state of being, is fully justified.
We need a new word to begin discussing the systems that make up this state of being—a word that is deliberately vague enough that it collapses all of the inessential distinctions in favor of capturing the qualities they all have in common.
What can we call this paradigm? I think of it as everyware.
Thesis 03
Everyware is information processing embedded in the objects and surfaces of everyday life.
Part of what the everyware paradigm implies is that most of the functionality we now associate with these boxes on our desks, these slabs that warm our laps, will be dispersed into both the built environment and the wide variety of everyday objects we typically use there.
Many such objects are already invested with processing power—most contemporary cameras, watches, and phones, to name the most obvious examples, contain microcontrollers. But we understand these things to be technical, and if they have so far rarely participated in the larger conversation of the "Internet of things," we wouldn't necessarily be surprised to see them do so.
Nor are we concerned, for the moment, with the many embedded microprocessors we encounter elsewhere in our lives, generally without being aware of them. They pump the brakes in our cars, cycle the compressors in our refrigerators, or adjust the water temperature in our washing machines, yet never interact with the wider universe. They can't be queried or addressed by remote systems, let alone interact directly with a human user.
It's not until they do share the stream of information passing through them with other applications and services that they'll become of interest to us. It is my sense that the majority of embedded systems will eventually link up with broader networks, but for now they play a relatively small role in our story.
By contrast, what we're contemplating here is the extension of information-sensing, -processing, and -networking capabilities to entire classes of things we've never before thought of as "technology." At least, we haven't thought of them that way in a long, long time: I'm talking about artifacts such as clothing, furniture, walls and doorways.
Their transparency is precisely why this class of objects is so appealing to engineers and designers as platforms for computation. These things are already everywhere, hiding in plain sight; nobody bats an eyelash at them. If nothing else, they offer a convenient place to stash the componentry of a computing power that might otherwise read as oppressive. More ambitiously, as we'll see, some designers are exploring how the possibilities inherent in an everyday object can be thoroughly transformed by the application of information technologies like RFID, Global Positioning System (GPS), and mesh networking.
The idea of incorporating digital "intelligence" into objects with