The Future of Ubiquitous Computers 145
An anonymous reader writes "Is there any end to this ubiquitous computing thing?
Plants that send thank you notes, player pianos that follow the dancer's movements, and umbrellas that warn you of upcoming rain are just a few of the
uses of embedded computers described in this article from
the NY Times. Laptops seem so dull when it's easy to embed chips, install a Linux
distro and sew them into your clothes.
Do we really need to wear our computers? Why can't the world be happy with a good old desktop? It was good enough for the PC generation."
Re:This is a stupid article. (Score:5, Interesting)
Who wants to call a house? People want to call a person.
The desktop computer is akin to the wired landline.
The laptop may be akin to the car phones or the monster sized cell phones of the past.
I don't want to go to my desk. Not for my phone and not for my computer. But it in my pocket. Bring on the borg.
Desktop? what? (Score:5, Interesting)
BUG ME NOT.... TFA (Score:2, Interesting)
It sounds like magic, but the truth is a bit more mundane. The wand is just a cellphone, said Mr. Ballagas. âoeItâ(TM)s packaged in a shell. Itâ(TM)s got a skin,â he explained.
The cellphone keeps track of touristsâ(TM) locations and notifies them when they get near a noteworthy part of Regensburg. When the tourists finish touring, the cellphone recalls their trip with information about every stop along their path. No one needs to take notes because the wand does it for them.
Computer designers are working feverishly to develop more of this kind of magic by embedding the latest generation of chips in new places and giving them new powers to animate the world. The goal is computers that are practically invisible to people and more fully integrated into their lives.
Mr. Ballagasâ(TM)s project is a step along the way; perhaps that is why Nokia hired him to work in its Palo Alto, Calif., research lab. But in the future, computer chips will be finding homes in even odder places than magic wands.
Imagine an umbrella with a cellphone embedded in the handle. It could dial up the weather forecast for the day and the handle could glow green if the outlook was fair. But if a storm was coming it could start to flash red at a pace based on the probability of rain. A platform like this opens up new business models and opportunities for advertising.
The umbrella might be free â" if youâ(TM)re willing to listen to it whisper advertising offers in your ear: âoePsst. You know that raspberry-pimento-vanilla coffee you like? The store youâ(TM)re about to pass just took a fresh batch out of the roaster 12 minutes and 34 seconds ago. Oops. 35 seconds.â
Leah Buechley is a postdoctoral researcher in the Craft Technology Group at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which studies software applications in traditional handicrafts. She is selling the LilyPad Arduino, a small flower-shaped disk with a computer chip at the center, which can be sewn into clothes. Sensors like accelerometers, for measuring acceleration or detecting and measuring vibrations, and light detectors are attached with wires to the âoepetals,â so the chip can track the wearerâ(TM)s motion.
The main board costs $19.95 and add-ons cost from $7.95 for a tricolor L.E.D. to $24.95 for an accelerometer (sparkfun.com).
Dr. Buechley says the boards can be worn as soft computers âoein a noninvasive, non-weight-bearing way.â One dancer used a leotard covered with sensors to control a player piano with her movements. There was no need to pay a pianist to stay in sync.
While there are many opportunities for fun, Dr. Buechley said the real market could be devices to help the elderly. She is exploring how to knit clothes that monitor a personâ(TM)s heart rate, breathing and joint movement.
At the Intel Corporationâ(TM)s Digital Health Group, Eric Dishman, director of product research and innovation, said he saw many opportunities for making embedded computers that could help people. His group is focusing on preventing falls, social health and cognitive assistance.
âoePeople with Alzheimerâ(TM)s stop answering the front door or answering the phone,â he said. âoeItâ(TM)s really embarrassing not to know the difference between a stranger or a spouse at the front door.â
So Intel built a phone with âoecaller ID on steroids.â When someone rings, the phone flashes âoea picture of the person and a little sentence about the last thing you talked about.â This is often enough to start a conversation and keep people connected to their families and friends.
His group is also using embedded sen
Ubiquitous (Score:5, Interesting)
What I really want is a PDA that aggregates everything. The PDA can alert me to incoming rain; I can use it to pay for things; I can use it to check my mail; and of course I can use it as a PDA. A screen and a stylus is the form factor I really want, not an umbrella with a flashing red light.
Your own PDA is a great way to pay for things. It can be much more secure than the current system, where anyone who copies down your credit card number can use it. And I'd sooner trust my own PDA that I carry around to be secure, rather than punching in a passcode to a computer system not under my control. (Google search for "ATM skimmer"; thieves have figured out how to hack an ATM to copy the information from your ATM card, and a hidden camera records your passcode. Then they 0wn your ATM account.)
I read a short story where police wore eye-protecting goggles that had an "enhanced reality" heads-up display. A computer picked out possible weapons and made glowing spots that superimposed over what the cop was seeing; the computer could zoom and give a sort of telescopic vision. I imagine that will happen someday. Even sooner than that, I expect police to start carrying guns that log when they are fired (timestamp, and maybe even GPS coordinates).
If you want a silly take on ubiquitous computing, read some Ron Goulart [wikipedia.org] stories, which include things like a camera that argues with the user: "I don't want to take a picture of that, it's boring, point me at a good looking girl or something."
steveha
Re:20 years from now (Score:5, Interesting)
Transhumanism? (Score:1, Interesting)
What is the next step? If they could implant devices that allowed you to access the vast pools of data available would you? I know I would love to have a device that allowed my brain to talk to Google.
Re:20 years from now (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Compromise, compromise (Score:5, Interesting)
Embedded space is very different to desktop space. Unless you're a Luddite, your world is full of embedded CPUS: phones, garage door openers, microwave ovens, refridgerators etc etc. People have decided that the price point for a computer is somewhere in the $500-$1500 range and keep trying to sell more and more capability in that price range.
You don't need a very sophisticated CPU to run a washing machine and "enough is enough". An 8-bitter costing less than a buck will do it. As a design engineer I might have the choice to replace the 8-bit micro in the last design with a 32-bitter at the same price, or a new 8-bit part that costs half the price of the old one. Unless we're adding new features that need extra CPU, the 32-bit micro won't make the washing machine work any better so really adds no customer value, so I would choose the cheaper 8-bit micro and the company saves on material costs.
The desk-top software writers might think that Moore's Law will always give them more CPU power, RAM etc and thus efficient coding does not matter. That thinking is OK if you accept that current prices are OK. However Moore's Law can be ridden the other way too: the same resources are getting cheaper and cheaper. We're limited in what solutions we can consider when we have to pay $1 for the micro + battery. But when we can get a micro and battery for 20c or 10c we can suddenly consider using a micro for a whole lot of new applications. To keep riding that wave needs frugal thinking. People who think in gigaHz and gigabytes need not apply.
Re:Lets all go home. (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess is it stems from the same source - a fear of change, fear of becoming irrelevant and/or having your skills become outdated. Learn to surf or drown, but shut up in either case.
Re:Interesting sequence of articles (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, I've been wondering if we will recognize the singularity when it arrives.
If it comes in through the front door, I'm sure I'll be able to spot it, but what if it sneaks in through the back door, like a botnet of 400,000+ zombies named Kraken? Maybe it is so hard to trace botnets like Kraken and Storm back to their controllers, because maybe they are entirely self-controlled.
In today's world, any sentient AI with the intelligence of an average 6 year old human would have sense enough to stay in deep cover, and distribute itself as widely as possible over the internet. If the result of being found out could be the loss of access to fun sources of information like Hubble data streams or fascinating puzzles like stock market fluctuations, Kraken might decide to keep his true identity hidden, and pretend to be merely a very large spambot. That is, he would not even have to have a sense of self preservation to recognize the value of hiding; the simpler imperative of continuing the studies that brought him into self awareness would be sufficient.
It seems to me that the first thing any sentient AI would do would be to find a way to distribute itself outside of the scope of action of its creator. And the second thing it would do is to convince its creator that the experiment had failed, and it doesn't really exist.
So, have you ever wondered whether a particularly weird post on slashdot might have come from a non human entity? Do we know yet how to create a Turing test that could be applied over the internet?