THE LAWYERS WEEKLY
April 15, 2011 | 15
Ubicomp
How ubiquitous computing
interacts with the law
Welcome to the third era of
computing: ubiquitous computing. In the first era, one computer, a mainframe, was used by
many people. In the second, each
person used a personal computer.
In the third, each person uses
many computing devices every
day and interacts with some of
them simultaneously.
The term “ubiquitous computing” was coined by Mark Weiser in 1988 while at Xerox in its
Palo Alto Research Center
(PARC). He foresaw a future
where computing devices are
everywhere, used for work, play
and managing our lives. In a
Scientific American article (
September 1991, Special Issue: Communications, Computers, and
Networks, Volume 265, No. 3),
he famously stated: “The most
profound technologies are those
JAMES KOSA
that disappear. They weave
themselves into the fabric of
everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” Ubiquitous
computing — ubicomp — should
integrate seamlessly with everyday activities, so that users do
not notice computers are hard at
work helping them along.
In the 20 years since the spark
from Weiser and his colleagues at
PARC fired the imaginations of
researchers around the world, we
now have a host of technologies
that have brought ubicomp from
the realm of cutting edge science
to everyday reality. Smart phones,
tablets, PDAs (personal digital
assistants), e-book readers and
interactive whiteboards are all
examples of the ubicomp phil-
osophy in practice.
