Sentient Data Access via a Diverse Society of Devices
George W. Fitzmaurice, Azam Khan, William A. S. Buxton, Gordon Kurtenbach, Ravin Balakrishnan · Queue · 2003
It has been more than ten years since such "information appliances" as ATMs and grocery store UPC checkout counters were introduced. For the office environment, Mark Weiser began to articulate the notion of UbiComp and identified some of the salient features of the trends in 1991. Embedded computation is also becoming widespread. Microprocessors, for example, are finding themselves embedded into seemingly conventional pens that remember what they have written. Anti-lock brake systems in cars are controlled by fuzzy logic. And as a result of wireless computing, miniaturization, and new economies of scale, such technologies as PDAs, IM, and mobile access to the Internet are almost taken for granted.