Context aware services

Abstract

We are currently witnessing the integration of information technology into practically all aspects of the human environment. Current trends indicate that we will soon see technologies that allow extremely large numbers of extremely low cost (micro-euro) microscopic computing elements to be directly incorporated into common artificial materials such as plastics, fabrics, or paper. Wireless network technologies would allow such elements to coalesce into local ad-hoc networks, enabling ordinary objects such as tables, chairs, and walls to provide information technology functions such as sensing, display, communications, and computing. With such technology, ordinary objects can be made animate, with autonomous abilities to sense and communicate. Endowing ordinary objects with animate abilities raises a serious threat to the ability of humans to control and focus attention. As can readily be seen from Internet-based services, when communication and information become free, attention becomes the limiting resource. Ambient Intelligence has the potential to greatly amplify the risk to disruption to human attention, as animated objects and autonomous migratory services vie for human attention. Unless such disruption is minimized and controlled, society will quickly rebel, rejecting the intrusion of animate machines in the human environment. Within the current state of the art in informatics, one of the greatest sources of disruption is the autistic nature of software and services. Information technology, as practiced in the late twentieth century, is totally insensitive to humans. Software systems are devoid of any ability to sense and recognize the goals, the activities or much less the emotional state that defines the context within which humans interact with machines. Without awareness of the human context, any attempt at proactive assistance simply generates an unwanted distraction, as a certain software manufacturer discovered with an animated Paperclip. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.