Are we cyberpunks yet?

Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision

Genevieve Bell and Paul Dourish: Published 2006

Bell and Dourish’s Yesterday’s tomorrows was published in 2006 – 15 years after Mark Weiser’s “foundational article” [p.1] The Computer for the 21^st Century which set out a vision for the ubiquitous computing research agenda and which remains the most referenced article in the field.

In the abstract the authors draw our attention to a key a difference between ubiquitous computing and other areas of computer science research. Unlike other related research agendas Ubicomp is driven “not so much by the problems of the past, but by the possibilities of the future”.  This is the dominant vision of the article’s title, and Bell and Dourish trace this feature of ubicomp all the way back to Weiser’s article with its twin aims of “anticipating future trends and meeting future needs”. The authors identify several problems with this conception. By focusing on a future which is permanently “just around the corner” ubiquitous computing risks viewing contemporary technology and the real world as irrelevant or outmoded. This in turns gives researchers and technologists licence to “absolve themselves of the responsibilities for the present” and to ignore “the messiness of everyday life”[p.2].

Bell and Dourish go on to discuss the idea of the “proximate future” in ubicomp in more detail and raise the question of whether the vision that Weiser set out has already come to pass? First though, both to help us answer this question and to move outside of the traditionally western centric bias of the ubicomp world, the authors give a brief summary of progress in two non-western environments: Singapore and Korea.

The authors give examples of ubicomp in these countries and in particular how the technology have responded to the societies that spawned it and which differ from our own. They use these examples to highlight the realities of technology in the modern world and return to the theme of the messiness of everyday life as a key feature of real world ubiquitous computing. In their view then, the ubicomp agenda is not only messy but is inextricably linked to the intractable problems of the modern day society. This is in a stark contrast to Weiser’s vision of slick, user friendly technology that “vanishes into the background” [Weiser, p.1].

Bell and Dourish conclude their paper by introducing a quotation from author William Gibson who is credited with founding the Cyberpunk genre of science fiction. Cyberpunk is a vision of a future society that is simultaneously high tech and low life. Gibson wrote “the future is already here; it’s just not very evenly distributed”. The authors use this quotation to frame their answer to the question posed earlier in the article – have we achieved Weiser’s vision for ubicomp or to put it as William Gibson might have, are we cyber punks yet? In the authors’ view in 2006 we had already arrived and now a quarter of a century after Weiser it’s even more clear that we’re inhabiting that proximal future that he envisioned. This technology though is neither straightforward or effortless and in fact is characterised by “surprising appropriations of technology for purposes never imagined by their inventors and often radically opposed to them” [p. 10].

I can’t help but feel that this is not only a much more realistic vision of the world around us and technology’s role in it but also a more interesting one. It’s a vision which the Digital Civics research agenda has fully embraced and which I increasingly look forward to engaging with. After all, where’s the fun in designing technology for the smooth and rather drab world Sal lives in as set out by Weiser? Designing technologies that can enhance or disrupt the chaotic, disjointed world that we live in has far more appeal.

This week I’m reading Activity tracking: barriers, workarounds and customisation as an example of ubicomp. I’ve chosen this paper as it deals with activity trackers and the difficulties of maintaining their use. Abandonment of activity trackers is something I have personal experience of and I recently used fitbits to monitor physical activity levels of Sustrans’ project participants so it’s something I’m keen to learn more about.