Fairy in a smart IC card: Interfacing people, town, and digital city

Abstract

The performance of recent smart IC cards is equal to the one of micro-computers about twenty years ago. Using the functions of smart IC cards, this paper proposes Fairy-Wing: yet another mobile computing system for community computing in a digital city. The system aims at supporting personal information management, information services, and dynamic collaborative filtering in order to interface the people, towns, and digital cities. The main features of the system are that (1) the agents or fairies are small, cheap, and easy-to-use; (2) they are fully distributed among ubiquitous computing environments with and/or without computer networks; and (3) holder-centered information controlling mechanisms. The application candidates in digital cities include travel navigation, collaborative education, and electronic commerce. This paper discusses the system architecture, feasibility of applications, Group Trip Advisor: a prototype of Fairy-Wing, and future issues.