From Ubiquitous Computing to Ambient Intelligence

Submitted by mirarmandehi on Mon, 2009-11-23 14:46

In his books “Personal Knowledge”[1]

Reference

Polanyi, M., Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, , Chicago , University of Chicago Press, 1958. and later “The Tacit Dimension”[2]

Reference

Polanyi, M., The Tacit Dimension, : First published Doubleday & Co, 1966. Reprinted Peter Smith, Gloucester, Mass, 1983, 1966. Michael Polanyi presents a post-modernist view of “knowledge” and the process of “knowing”. He introduces two kinds of awareness namely subsidiary awareness and focal awareness [3]

Reference

Grant, K. A., "Tacit Knowledge Revisited – We Can Still Learn from Polanyi ", Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 5, issue 2, 05/2007. . He suggests that proximate devices such as a tool can be used to achieve a wider objective. However, in the process of using these devices some level of awareness is required which depends on the skills of the users. The skillful individuals with only a subsidiary level of awareness of using the device can focus on the overall objective while less skilled ones pay more attention to application of the proximate device itself and therefore have a focal awareness of the device. A good example could be given by comparing a skilled driver with someone who has just started to learn to drive. The later is conscious of using the pedals, the steering wheel, the mirrors, and even the proper hand placement and seating position while the skilled driver has only a subsidiary level of awareness over these issues and focuses on the road.

 

Inspired by this theory, Mark Weiser[4]

Reference

Weiser, M., "The Computer for the 21st Century", Scientific American, 10/1991. suggests:
 
The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.
 
and what he means by this is that a successful technology is one that we use without being aware that we are using it (subsidiary awareness). This kind of technology will help us achieve a more sophisticated objective by focusing on the objective itself. He points out that today’s computing technology, i.e., personal computer is far from disappearing. The fact that there is a single machine which can handle all sorts of personal computing makes it a very complex device which requires a great deal of attention and is nowhere close to vanishing to the background. He predicts that the future of Information Technology relies on computer devices integrated into everyday life objects, connected with strong communication networks, which makes computing an integral, invisible part of the way people live their lives. These computing devices will become ubiquitous in the environment in a sense that they will become a constant background presence.
 
This state of invisibility is what the philosopher Martin Heidegger refers to as “ready-to-hand” as opposed to “present-at-hand”. In seeing an entity as present-at-hand, as Heidegger puts, the beholder is concerned only with the bare facts of a thing or a concept, as they are present in order to theorize about it. However “the ready-to-hand is not grasped theoretically at all.” No abstract context-independent awareness occurs while we are in this mode. Our “awareness” pertains only to context-filled activity, whole actions leading to particular goals—such as mailing a letter or hammering a nail. Many seemingly discrete movements and “objects” (letters, hammers) may be involved in such tasks, but we do not reflect upon them (nor do they exist) as independent theoretical entities in the manner of subject/object dichotomy. They are, in a real sense, an inextricable part of us and the activity[5]

Reference

Slife, B. D., Time and psychological explanation, : Albany State Univ. of New York Press, pp. 257, 1993. .
 
When we are using a hammer it is ready-to-hand; we use it without theorizing. In fact, if we were to look at it as present-at-hand, we might easily make a mistake. Only when it breaks or something goes wrong might we see the hammer as present-at-hand, just lying there. Even then however, it may be not fully present-at-hand, as it is now showing itself as something to be repaired or disposed, and therefore a part of the totality of our involvements. In this case its Being may be seen as unreadiness-to-hand. Heidegger outlines three manners of unreadiness-to-hand: Conspicuous (damaged, eg. lamps wiring has broken), Obtrusive (a part is missing which is required for the entity to function eg. we find the bulb is missing), Obstinate (when the entity is a hindrance to us in pursuing a project, e.g. the lamp blocks my view of the computer screen).
 
Having in mind this transition from readiness to unreadiness, Weiser suggests a new design for the future ubiquitous information technology: a technology that encalms. Calm technology [6]

Reference

Weiser, M., and J S. Brown, Designing Calm Technology, , 1995. engages both the center and the periphery of our attention, and in fact moves back and forth between the two. He uses "periphery" to name what we are attuned to without attending to explicitly, or in other words what is ready-to-hand at the current time. He gives the example of driving in which ordinarily our attention is centered on the road, the radio, our passenger, but not the noise of the engine. However an unusual noise is noticed immediately, showing that we were attuned to the noise in the periphery, and could come quickly to attend to it.
 
Weiser insists that a calm technology should be able to move easily from the periphery of our attention, to the center, and back. This transition is fundamental to the encalming process for two reasons. First, by placing things in the periphery we are able to grasp more information than we could if everything had to be at the center. Thus the periphery is informing in a non-obtrusive way. Second, we are able to recenter something formerly in the periphery and take control of it anytime we like. Therefore with centering the periphery is a fundamental enabler of calm through increased awareness and power since any periphery which requires our immediate consideration will move back to our center of attention automatically through the process of becoming conspicuous, obtrusive, or obstinate. 
 
A technology may enhance our peripheral reach by bringing more details into the periphery. An example is a video conference that, by comparison to a telephone conference, enables us to attune to nuances of body posture and facial expression that would otherwise be inaccessible. Weiser considers this as encalming since the enhanced peripheral reach increases our knowledge and so our ability to act without increasing information overload. In his point of view “there is more information available at our fingertips during a walk in the woods than in any computer system, yet people find a walk among trees relaxing and computers frustrating. Machines that fit the human environment, instead of forcing humans to enter theirs, will make using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods”.
 
Weiser opposes his vision of ubiquitous computing with the notion of “virtual reality” which attempts to make a world inside the computer where the focus is on simulating the world rather than on invisibly enhancing the world that already exists. In his words the opposition between the notion of virtual reality and ubiquitous computing is so strong that he uses the term "embodied virtuality"[7]

Reference

Weiser, M., "The Computer for the 21st Century", Scientific American, 10/1991. to refer to the environment equipped by these ubiquitous computers where the "virtuality" represents all the different ways in which  computer-readable data can be altered, processed and analyzed and brought into the physical world.
 
It is worth noting that by computing Weiser suggests some level of intelligence which may refer to a simple reflex agent such as a thermostat or more a more complex agent such as a cleaning robot. In the same context Zelkha and Epstein first coined the term Ambient Intelligence (AmI) [8]

Reference

Zelkha, E., and B. Epstein, "From Devices to Ambient Intelligence", Digital Living Room Conference, 06/1998. as introducing the concept of Digital Living Room where in fact is a embodied virtuality in Weiser’s terms. In their work the emphasis is more on intelligence than invisibility(ambience) where technology will move from an explicit, instructional model to an implicit, anticipatory one. They suggest that in the future instead of giving explicit instruction as the norm, the norm will be to have our needs fulfilled. Therefore the technology of the Digital Living Room they suggest should be:
 
  1. Embedded: Many invisible dedicated devices throughout our environment (in other words ubiquitous)
  2. Personalized: The devices know who you are
  3. Adaptive: Change in response to you and the environment
  4. Anticipatory: The devices anticipate and satisfy your desires as far as possible without conscious mediation
 
Schilit and his colleagues suggested that ubiquitous computers should  examine and react to the change of context and proposed the concept of "Context-aware" computing [9]

Reference

Schilit, B., N. Adams, and R. Want., "Context-aware computing applications", IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, Santa Cruz, CA, US., pp. 89-101, 1994. . Such devices can recognize you and your situational context including where you are, who you are with, and what recources are nearby. Today a more complicated aspect of context that is activity at hand  is also investigated.

 

In 2001Information Society and Technology Advisory Group (ISTAG) of the European Commission based their vision of the future of Information Society on Ambient Intelligence [10]

Reference

, ISTAG Scenarios for Ambient Intelligence in 2010, : EC, 2001. . They presented four scenarios for 2010 where in each of them people are surrounded by intelligent intuitive interfaces that are embedded in all kinds of objects and an environment that is capable of recognising and responding to the presence of different individuals in a seamless, unobtrusive and often invisible way.
 
In their vision proposes a series of necessary characteristics that will permit the eventual societal acceptance of AmI:
  • AmI should facilitate human contact.
  • AmI should be orientated towards community and cultural enhancement.
  • AmI should help to build knowledge and skills for work, better quality of work, citizenship and consumer choice.
  • AmI should inspire trust and confidence.
  • AmI should be consistent with long term sustainability – personal, societal and environmental and with life-long learning. In essence, the challenge is to create an AmI landscape made up of ‘convivial technologies’ that are easy to live with.
  • AmI should be controllable by ordinary people – i.e. the ‘off-switch’ should be within reach: these technologies could very easily acquire an aspect of ‘them controlling us’. The experts involved in constructing the scenarios therefore underlined the essential need that people are given the lead in way that systems, services and interfaces are implemented.
They discuss new businuss models which may become possible by the widespread use of this technology and investigate new research clusters emerging from the proposed scenarios. The European Commission played a crucial role in the further development of the AmI vision. As a result of many initiatives the AmI vision gained traction and during the past few years several major initiatives have been started.

 

References

  1. Polanyi, M., Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, , Chicago , University of Chicago Press, 1958.
  2. Polanyi, M., The Tacit Dimension, : First published Doubleday & Co, 1966. Reprinted Peter Smith, Gloucester, Mass, 1983, 1966.
  3. Grant, K. A., "Tacit Knowledge Revisited – We Can Still Learn from Polanyi ", Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 5, issue 2, 05/2007.
  4. Weiser, M., "The Computer for the 21st Century", Scientific American, 10/1991.
  5. Slife, B. D., Time and psychological explanation, : Albany State Univ. of New York Press, pp. 257, 1993.
  6. Weiser, M., and J S. Brown, Designing Calm Technology, , 1995.
  7. Weiser, M., "The Computer for the 21st Century", Scientific American, 10/1991.
  8. Zelkha, E., and B. Epstein, "From Devices to Ambient Intelligence", Digital Living Room Conference, 06/1998.
  9. Schilit, B., N. Adams, and R. Want., "Context-aware computing applications", IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, Santa Cruz, CA, US., pp. 89-101, 1994.
  10. , ISTAG Scenarios for Ambient Intelligence in 2010, : EC, 2001.