Stuart Nicholson: Moving on from Weiser’s Vision of Calm Computing

The paper firstly explores the scope of ubiquitous computing as envisioned by the now considered “forefather”, Mark Weiser who coined the phrase in 1988. He believed that ubiquitous computing should “stay out the way” in people’s lives as if it were invisible and serve the purpose of bringing people serenity, comfort and awareness of their surroundings; this ideology was named “Calm Computing”. The author of the paper, Yvonne Rogers, argues that it is time to move on and abandon this outdated theory as we have not successfully managed to implement Weiser’s theory into technological practice. Rogers evidences her argument by referencing a number of “failed” projects such as MIT’s Oxygen, IBM’s Blue Eyes and HP’s CoolTown which were all attempts at realising Weiser’s vision within “smart home” environment. Rogers reinforces her argument by stating how the slow and complex development of artificial intelligence has hampered progress simply because we do not understand enough about human nature to design systems that can openly and consistently “adapt” to our behaviour.

I agree with Rogers in that artificial intelligence appears to be at a standstill as developing technology is somewhat cumbersome and only operates between very specific parameters. For example, IBM’s Blue Eyes project switched on a television when a user made direct eye contact with it; this was a success from a technical point of view however, it was easily broken by unintentional glances, if the user was wearing glasses or even if the user accidentally “stared into space” (in the direction of the television) while reading a book. Such “success” as it was called seems miniscule and somewhat pointless if applied to any real life application – I would reword Weiser’s vision of “calm computing” and call it “frustrating computing” in this instance.

Rogers goes on to explain how there needs to be a movement towards “engaged living” as opposed to “calm living” – an approach which re-establishes the users control instead of proactive computing. Rogers approach outlines how anyone should be able to use toolkits comprising of a multitude of sensing technologies to facilitate creative authoring, designing, learning, thinking and playing to enable users to become smarter and proactive in their everyday lives and working practices. I concur with Rogers ideas of which direction ubiquitous computing should go. The notion of user led authoring with regards to ubiquitous technology could potentially unearth even greater routes for the future. I believe this partly because “everyday” people have not necessarily been exposed to Weiser’s theory and so may be able to think of simple “down-to-earth” ideas that have not been tainted by his outdated vision. Rogers concludes by stating that toolkits for users should be as natural to use as Lego sets; something I think that is starting to emerge with current technologies such as the Raspberry Pi, Pico board and other similar gadgets.

The paper which I have chosen is “PosterVote: Expanding the Action Repertoire for Local Political Activism”. It was chosen primarily because it is a piece of technology that is non-obtrusive and allows users to have full control which I feel is in-line with Roger’s vision for future ubiquitous computing. Available here!

Matt Wood says:

October 29, 2015 at 5:34 pm

I really like how you call on a concept of “frustrating computing”, I can just imagine the frustration that could entail in a smart home with everyone with appliances randomly turning on and off depending on where you’re looking. In fact I even find this now – an example that’s often cited is autocorrect, a technology that we’re not supposed to notice yet is often the vein of everyone’s lives when they’re repeatedly correcting a word that it doesn’t recognise. I think this is an interesting commentary on “disappearing technology”, in fact when technology tries to go unnoticed I think it sometimes becomes even more visible.

I do wonder though how ‘outdated’ his vision was though – Weiser did predict some of the developments in technology with startling accuracy, and even some of the more utopian images in Sal’s story may have come about in different ways. Although we don’t have ‘electronic trails’ of neighbours comings and goings I seem to know what all my friends are doing from where they’ve clocked in on facebook, and google maps has started advising me on routes based on traffic knowledge. Although I love the idea of engaged living inspired by the maker movement, but I wonder how mainstream this will ever be. I think rapberry pi kits have become 21st centaury lego sets for tech hungry kids, but do you think there will come a time when everyone is adapting tech for their own purposes? Or in the mainstream are we really looking at how people engage with prescribed ‘ubicomp’ experiences?

Jan Kučera says:

October 30, 2015 at 8:03 pm

Have you noticed that “putting users in control” might be in direct conflict with making easy toolkits? I haven’t personally tried Pico board but Raspberry Pi is way too far from being natural to use as Lego sets, especially if you have to set it up, or if something goes wrong – that’s an interesting one, because for people to be both in control and engaged, they need to be able to fix problems. If something goes wrong with Lego, you still have just Lego to fix.

Also modern software and hardware development does not seem to be on-board with the trend of putting users in control, taking away all buttons and settings and even UI elements, up to the absolute minimum. If I remember well there will be another session where this is more relevant, but I wonder whether you prefer to be in control or have limited but easy options? And your grandmother? How do you design to address different desires of users?

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