Neuroergonomic workshop

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As a weak signal about the growing importance of neuropsychology in human-computer interaction, design and ergonomics, there is a workshop called "From Neuropsychology to Neuroergonomics: the Cognitive Continuum" (part of the 2nd Meeting of the European Societies of Neuropsychology), in Toulouse, France, October 19th, 2006 - 2.30 PM - 7.00 PM.

Neuropsychology and Neuroergonomics share: - The same core, the uncovering of the neural substratum of cognitive and/or sensorimotor performance and the investigation of the cerebral mechanisms underlying the performance, and - The same goal, the design of better cognitive rehabilitation protocols or training strategies, and/or better human-machine interfaces through the integration of knowledge on cerebral mechanisms.

Neuropsychology is an approach for more "cerebrally inspired" design and HMI. Looking beyond a discrete view of Neuropsychology and Neuroergonomics, the workshop's goal is to highlight the convergence and cross-fertilization of the two disciplines,

IEEE forecast survey

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In the last issue of IEEE Spectrum, there are results from and IFTF/IEEE survey about what developments IEEE Fellows expect in science and technology in the next 10 to 50 years. It's called "Bursting Tech Bubbles Before They Balloon" and was written by Marina Gorbis and David Pescovitz & IEEE Fellows Survey. Some excerpts I found pertinent below. First they start bursting tech bubbles:

As our population ages and needs more care, there will be fewer young people to provide it. But don’t expect to fill the personnel gap with humanoid robotic nurses (...) Forget about being chauffeured to work by your car; the Fellows doubt that autonomous, self-driving cars will be in full commercial production anytime soon. And though they say Moore’s Law will someday finally yield to the laws of physics, slowing the increase in computer performance, the IEEE Fellows don’t expect to get around the problem by using quantum weirdness to perform calculations at fabulous speeds. Seventy-eight percent of respondents doubt that a commercial quantum computer will reach the market in the next 50 years. (...) no space elevators in most of their forecasts

Then they give some more theoretical issues about foresight:

“We tend to overestimate the impact of a technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run,” observed former IFTF president Roy Amara (...) A few were uncomfortable making forecasts, arguing that science and technology are unpredictable. At IFTF, we wholeheartedly agree. Trying to predict specific events and timing is best left to astrologers. Instead, our researchers in Palo Alto, Calif., look for signals—events, developments, projects, investments, and expert opinions, like those provided by this survey—that, taken together, give indications of key trends. Observed as a complex ecology, these signals reveal where these developments may be taking us. (...) “While technology may permit many of the forecasted accomplishments to occur, human beings may well resist their implementation,” writes electrical and computer engineering professor Andrew Szeto of San Diego State University in his survey comments.

As Yogi Berra reportedly said, “The hardest thing to predict is the future.” And as we’ve said, our survey does not try to predict the sci-tech future but merely to uncover key directions. So although we may not be able to say that in 2015 a space elevator will be shuttling goods and people into orbit or that in 2020 we’ll all have robot servants, we can foresee that in the next several decades we will be building our infrastructure in a new way: we will have unlimited computing resources, live in a sensory-rich computing environment, and reengineer ourselves and the biological world around us. Understanding these larger trends helps organizations think about adapting to the future, and thus shaping it.

Why do I blog this? I like this idea of bursting bubbles and there are some good insights to gain from it. Besides, the article gives interesting ideas and signs about possible avenues.

Relevance in telling the time

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In Truthfulness and relevance in telling the time, Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst, Laure Carles, and Dan Sperber (Mind and Language, vol 17, No 5, November 2002, pp 457-466) examined an intriguing phenomenon: "Someone approached in the street and asked "What time is it?" at a point when her watch reads (for instance) 3:08 is likely to answer "It is 3:10"".

We argue that a fundamental factor that explains such rounding is a psychological disposition to give an answer that, while not necessarily strictly truthful or accurate, is an optimally relevant one (in the sense of relevance theory) i.e. an answer from which hearers can derive the consequences they care about with minimal effort. A rounded answer is easier to process and may carry the same consequences as one that is accurate to the minute. Hence rounding is often a way of optimising relevance. Three simple, near-"natural" experiments, which involve approaching people in public places and asking the time, give support and greater precision to the view that relevance is more important than strict truthfulness in verbal communication. (...) To determine what is relevant to someone, it is necessary to attend to his or her states of mind. There is an extensive psychological literature on "theory of mind" or "mindreading" abilities, exploring how humans are capable of attending to one another's states of mind (e.g. Baron-Cohen, Tager-Flusberg & Cohen, 2000; Carruthers & Smith 1996; Davis & Stone, 1995). There is also a rich literature on perspective taking in communication which has shown that speakers take into account the point of view of hearers in a way that facilitates comprehension (see Krauss & Fussell 1996 for a recent review). The present study shows that such a mindreading ability and attention to the point of view of the hearer is at work even in the simplest forms of everyday communication between strangers. Speakers tend to make the effort of inferring what information may be relevant, i.e. be both consequential and easy to process, for the hearer. In so doing, they go beyond facilitating comprehension, and attend to the interests that make comprehension desirable to the hearer in the first place. Helpful speakers aim at relevance rather than accuracy (and hence strict truthfulness) in what they say. They spontaneously adjust the level of accuracy of their utterances - up or down as the context requires - so as to optimise relevance.

Why do I blog this? because I am currently writing the theoretical framework part of my PhD dissertation and I used Sperber and Wilson's Relevance theory. Even though this telling time conversation issue is simple, it involves mechanisms that are also at stake in other interactional contexts (such as Catchbob coordination).

Title mania

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The NYT has a piece about title-mania and what it might mean:

“group idea management director”? / “chief transformation officer” / “marketing evangelist” / “chief consumer officer” / “vice president for stakeholder relations” (...) Experts say the unconventional titles are intended to signal a realization by an advertiser or agency that in a rapidly changing marketing and media landscape, the time for the tried and true has come and gone. The titles serve the same purpose, in other words, as an agency announcing that it is opening a division specializing in e-mail marketing, getting into the field of branded entertainment or starting a blog. “The agency is saying: ‘We are contemporary. We get it,’ ” said Susan Friedman (...) The dot-com bust deflated some of the zest for nontraditional titles, but the ferment in the new-media field in the last year or two seems to have revived it.

The title trend is gaining popularity at the same time as the practice of giving agencies unusual names, to let potential clients know they take an unconventional approach to advertising. Some examples include Amalgamated, Anomaly, Droga5, Mother, Naked, Nitro, StrawberryFrog, Taxi and Zig.

“It’s a screening device,”

Why do I blog this? I am not that into unconventional titles (even thought I don't what can be my title judging my fuzzy hats) but I find the trend intriguing; it might reveal some more serious phenomenon.

Gadget about light for kids

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Digital Light Studio:

This is the digital light machine that allows children to create light sculptures by using seven freehand control knobs to manipulate 32 LEDs mounted on a spinning post under a 360 dome. In demonstration mode, the LEDs light up in different patterns, speeds, and directions to display any one of over 50 pre-programmed images, including a fountain, UFO, elephant, and pirate. A warp button spins, rotates, bounces, and disassembles images. An animation button plays up to 14 animated sequences, including a dragonfly, penguin dance, and blinking eye. Original light sculptures and animations may be created by using the knobs in tandem with normal, mirror, and kaleidoscope modes to draw, rotate, and invert images.

Why do I blog this? I really like this kind of interface, very tangible with a gestural dimension; IMO this is the direction where robots, video games and interactive toys are heading. Turning knobs to make your character rolling with a tangible instantiation in the form of light (REZ was so light oriented that you could think about removing the display and having this sort of lightform).

Vernor Vinge's insights about the future of ubicomp games

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An excerpt from Vernor Vinge's talk at the Austin Game Conference (transcribed by Mark Wallace):

If you take together all of the things I have been pushing here [augmented reality through high-resolution HUD, geolocation, smart tags...], there really is a situation where cyberspace has leaked into the real world, in fact the title of the talk was Inside Out, which was intended to convey the notion of what was inside box in all eras up to ours, in this sort of era is outside. (...) Wearables are the interface to it, but the situation with the network as a whole is very interesting, it hasn’t gotten rid of big pipes or server farms, however we would be in a situation where reality has become its own database, in the sense that objects in the outside world, millions of them would know what they are, know where they are, know where their nearest neighbors are, and can talk to their nearest neighbors and by extenstion to anything in the world. (...) This produces the possibility of a form of insight into dealing with the real world once cyberspace has leaked out, once you have this inside out thing.

Then he described the consequences for games and digital entertainment:

There’s a mad rush into embedded processors going forward very rapidly. The localization I’m talking about is much harder. Really good 4k by 4k HUDs, I’m actually somewhat surprised it hasn’t happend already. When those come along, there’s suddenly a whole other set of things you can do. (...) One question is how many alternate realities could simultaneously exist. If you work out the arithmetic and believe the hardware infrastructure scenario I painted, you’re getting 10 to 100 gigabits per second to each person. That means that basically the number of possible alternate realities would be at least as high as the number of people, and could be higher depending on what kind of multitasking people were doing. (...) It’s not so much a question of the place of games in the future world, but a question of whether there’s anything going on besides games. It depends what you mean by game. There are going to be very serious things going on in this world, but the technology behind them might not be distinguishable from games, or only in that with a game you can often turn a bug into not only a feature but a selling point. On the other hand, if you are writing software to land aircraft, mother nature does not accept bugs that are selling points.

So what?:

One of biggest problem with this sort of situation is generating content. Nowadays one thing you hear a fair amount about is getting customers to generate content, which has attained almost faddish levels. In an auidience like this that’s probably not that popular of an idea. On the other hand, when you look at the amount of content that would be necessary to support this, which is essentially all of reality, and you look at the fact that already the largest generators of content are people with home cameras, there is probably something that’s going to be going on with that sort of stuff. It seems to me that we are entering an era various companies have figured out, in which there are ways of spending enormous amounts of money on certain hardware platforms, software, social interactions, and coaxing the creative beast to come out of hiding and do things for you.

See also Mike Kuniavsky's notes on that.

"Berenice" by Motohiko Odani

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In the 2004 edition of the Venice Biennale, there was this intriguing piece of work by Motohiko Odani and called Berenice:

Some comments by Thomas Kramar:

Ein Stockwerk höher, unter anderen räumlichen Krümmungen dieses so seltsam in sich gekrümmten Kunsthauses, liegt eine Art Ufo: eine Kugel, wirr verkabelt, schon leicht angerostet, aber immer noch vibrierend, wie kürzlich gestrandet auf einem gleichgültigen Planeten: "Berenice" heißt das Objekt von Motohiko Odani - nach der antiken ägyptischen Stadt?

Why do I blog this? I like this big white sphere plugged with cables; it looks like a left nuclear weapon that is curious, intriguing and maybe about to explode (a la Akira); or pulsing "information". In the end it interrogates people about its role: would it be the "consciousness" (the place where information flows converge) of a place? To me, it can be the server of a city district that would enable to host what is needed to have a mixed reality. And of course, it might be left in an old cave that nobody can access.

Risk evaluation of pervasive computing

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A quote from Jürgen Bohn, Vlad Coroama, Marc Langheinrich, Friedemann Mattern, Michael RohsLiving in a World of Smart Everyday Objects – Social, Economic, and Ethical Implications. Journal of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, Vol. 10, No. 5, pp. 763-786, October 2004

Today’s technical infrastructures, such as the phone system, television, and electricity, are relatively easy to use, even for people with no special qualifications. This also entails the ability to detect malfunctions: for example, if you lift a telephone receiver and do not hear a dial tone, it is immediately evident that the phone (either the handset or the landline) is not working properly. However, this type of predictability of system behavior can no longer be taken for granted in an ambient-intelligence landscape, as systems are expected to function without users noticing their presence. This will make fault detection and diagnosis fundamentally difficult, especially for the layman (Estrin et al. 2002). Additionally, users might continue to rely on a failed service (e.g., an automated backup service or the self-diagnostics of a smart product) without noticing, thus increasing the damage done until the problem is finally discovered.

Why do I blog this? the articles describes a pertinent risk evaluation of pervasive computing. I was hooked on that one (originally I was looking for references about predictability of applications), other risks are important too.

Nintendo R.O.B

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Who remembers Nintendo R.O.B (The Robotic Operating Buddy)? an accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System released in 1984 in Japan as the "Famicom Robot" and in 1985 as R.O.B in North America.

The R.O.B. functions by receiving commands via optical flashes from a television screen. With the head pointed always at the screen, the arms move left, right, up, and down, and the hands pinch together and separate to manipulate objects on fixtures attached to the base. Gamers without experience might wonder how R.O.B. relays data back to the NES, and in fact there is no direct way to do so. In Gyromite, one of R.O.B.'s base attachments holds and pushes buttons on an ordinary controller. In Stack-Up the player is supposed to press a button on his or her own controller to indicate when R.O.B. completes a task. While the Robot Series games were among the most complex of its time, they were reliant upon the honor system.

An interesting video here.

Why do I blog this? even though it was not a commercial success, the ideas developed by Nintendo are quite innovative, this buddy-metaphor is interesting and there are curious connections with tangible interfaces.

Wifi Camera Obscura

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One of the recent project of Adam Somlai-Fisher, Usman Haque and Bengt Sjölén is " Wifi Camera Obscura":

Wifi Camera Obscura reveals the electromagnetic space of our devices and the shadows that we create within such spaces, in particular our wifi networks which are increasingly found in coffee shops, offices and homes throughout cities of the developed world. We will take realtime "photos" of wifi space.

(picture taken from the original project, courtesy of Adam Somlai-Fisher, Usman Haque and Bengt Sjölén)

Why do I blog this? not because it's made up of wasabi cans but rather because I find the idea of revealing the "the electromagnetic space of our devices": visualizing the info cloud is compelling to me; both in terms of tech awareness in the environment as well as for aesthetical issues.

IEEE Computing on Urban Computing

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The last issue of IEEE Computer is a special edition about urban computing. Here is the stance of the editors (Irina Shklovski from Carnegie Mellon University and Michele F. Chang, from ReD Associates):

This special issue focuses on the topic of urban computing because we feel it is important to consider public spaces as potential sites for the development of computing. The articles presented here point to issues of theoretical understanding of these spaces, as well as the technical feasibility of technology design and development. We are not calling for technology designers to become urban planners and social scientists, but we do suggest that there is a wealth of research in these areas that needs to be taken into account when designing new technologies. Collaborations are crucial to understanding social life and creating technologies that can augment it in positive ways. We believe that research in urban computing can be useful for augmenting and extending existing theories in relevant fields and for greater blending of these fields to develop a coherent understanding of public social life.

The articles seem to be very promising, as attested by the editorial summary:

In “Imagining the City: The Cultural Dimensions of Urban Computing,” Amanda Williams and Paul Dourish (...) point out that understanding the aspects of public spaces that make them legible to the inhabitants is critical to understanding the diverse needs of their inhabitants. (...) In “Facilitating Social Networking in Inner-City Neighborhoods,” Marcus Foth explores the friends and strangers component of public spaces (...) The article suggests that there is a need—indeed, a market—for collaborative systems, which will be difficult to provide if we rely on existing ideas about “communities.” In contrast, Vassilis Kostakos, Eamonn O’Neill, and Alan Penn further explore the concept of legibility in “Designing Urban Pervasive Systems.” (...) Both propose usable analytical frameworks for designing and evaluating urban environments. (...) In “Public Pervasive Computing: Making the Invisible Visible,” Jesper Kjeldskov and Jeni Paay address a com- bination of sociality, mobility, and legibility issues as they describe lessons learned from testing an interactive prototype system for use in a public space. (...) One of Kjeldskov and Paay’s observations is that when people spend leisure time in a public space, they do not necessarily desire to meet everyone in that space. They are comfortable with the space being populated by strangers (familiar strangers concept) (...) “Simulations for Urban Planning: Designing for Human Values” by Janet Davis and colleagues (...) describe a full-scale system that has been piloted and used to support public participation in developing policies in urban communities around the world.

Why do I blog this? because the issue gives a very clear overview of currently identified problems related with urban computing.

loc8tor

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Via timo: the loc8tor:

Loc8tor uses a blend of exciting new technologies and traditional radio frequency (RF) technology. Both Tags and Handheld transmit and receive radio signals. The Loc8tor Handheld picks up this signal translating it in to clear audio and visual prompts to guide you in the right direction or warn that an item has gone astray. Audio beeps are also emitted by the Tag to help you home in on the items specific location.

Characteristics are quite interesting:

Up to 24 Tags can be monitored in Locate or Alert modes. Loc8tor has a maximum range of 183 metres / 600 feet. This is based upon an outdoor application with clear line of sight. Obstacles such as walls, floors, cupboards and other people will reduce the maximum range proportionately. The Handheld guides you to within 2.5cm / 1” of your possessions. Loc8tor is fully directional and will provide guidance left and right, and up and down.

Timo gives an excellent review of the system, framing it into an "ambient findability" concept:

In practice one attaches the tags to important objects by way of key fobs, adhesive backing or containment, and then name the tags one by one through the interface on the handheld finder. When you lose something, you press a button, select the thing you want to find and the unit starts bleeping: the intensity of the sound, and the bars on the screen are proportional to your proximity to the lost item. Because it’s directional, you can turn around slowly in a circle, and find an initial direction, then repeat this a few times and you normally find the thing you are looking for.

Where this product fails miserably is in the interface. The arrangement of buttons and screen menus shows a lack of thought or design process: they are inconsistent, badly labelled, overly hierarchical, highly modal and very prone to simple errors. (...) Given that the act of losing something – or remembering to take things with you – usually happens in moments of stress: walking out the door, gathering things from around you, getting off the train, this interface is overly complicated for its intended use.

Why do I blog this? because this tool is a - sort-of - weak signal of applications that may populate the Internet of Things, but why do we need yet another device for that matter?

Gartner Hype cycle 2006

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David pointed me on this instantiation of the Gartner Hype Cyle 2006:

Location-aware technologies seem to be in the end of the disillusionment phase; I agree with the disillusionment thing and hope that it's reaching the end with innovative and user-oriented potentialities...

Historical elements of CSCW

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The Context of CSCW by Liam J. Bannon and John A. Hughes is an interesting report that gives some contextual and historical elements of the research field I am doing my PhD work: Computer Supported Cooperative Work Some excerpts I found pertinent with regards to what I experiences:

The term CSCW was coined by the computer scientists Irene Greif of MIT (now at Lotus) and Paul Cashman of Digital in the early eighties. (...) There is still no commonly accepted definition of CSCW (Wilson, 1991). Indeed, whether CSCW can be viewed as a new field of research in its own right has been questioned by some. Bannon et al. (1988) noted how CSCW might be viewed as simply an "umbrella term" that allowed people from a variety of different disciplines, with partially overlapping concerns, to come together and discuss issues, without any common ground as to the concept of CSCW, other than the very loose idea that it was somehow about the use of computers to support activities of people working together.

... a field made up of very different people:

Within the field of CSCW, loosely construed, a number of different groupings have been discerned by commentators. Howard (1988) coined the term "strict constructionists" to describe those in the field focused on the development of computer systems to support group work, who tend to use themselves as objects of analysis in the provision of support tools. These people, mainly implementers, are interested in building tools - widgets, and they see the area of CSCW as a possible leverage point for creating novel applications. Most of these people equate the CSCW field with Groupware, as they focus on new software applications.

Howard (1988) has labelled those who make up the remainder of the CSCW field, the larger part, as "loose constructionists," a heterogeneous collection of people, some of whom are drawn to the area by their dissatisfaction with current uses of technology to support work processes, others because they see in this area a chance for communities who traditionally have not had a voice in the design of computer systems to have one.

The authors then describe different shifts which have informed the rise of CSCW: new information systems practice (less about automation, more about sociality), the search for new software application markets, the organisational environment (need for better ways of organising and co-ordinating work activitie), news technological developments (better "connectivity" of computer systems), people's expectations (more flexible and tailorable user interfaces), the requirement of ecological validity in HCI.

Why do I blog this? because it gives context to my research, to see where I sit (studying the cognitive coupling between users and the system).

why a concept car?

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According to the smart concept car presentation:

A concept is an abstract idea or notion and a concept car is exactly that, a theoretical prototypical perception. Concept cars are by design to analysis new designs, ideas and new shapes for the automobile. Concept cars always attract attention to themselves as well as their manufacturers. Concept cars are utilized to manufacture interests. These cars offer us a visual aid to the automotive future and it’s potential evolution. The innovative draft, unconventional options, and ground-breaking ideas allow the automobile to improve and encourage competition among the every expanding number of car manufactures. Speculation and rumors always surround the concept car theme. While concept vehicles are designed to inspire awe, others are just for fun. Concept cars come in different stages of presentation or completion.

Why do I blog this? looking at the new Citroën C-Métisse concept car, I was thinking about the roles of concept-car and then I ran across this definition by Smart; which I found interesting because it's given from the viewpoint of the company.

What I find curious here is that the car industry calls this "concept car" and do not sell it; it's only meant to show some new directions and to have an emulation between car-makers. Whereas the tech industry releases beta or early prototypes they sell as product but it often fails. There seems to be a very different stance between tech industries releasing gadgets and software and the car industry which release "concept products".

What's next? a beta car?

Partystrands

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Fabien pointed me on Partystrands:

PartyStrands is a music service launching next month that will bring together aggregated recommendations, voting and photos synchronized on location by mobile phone. (...) People who have downloaded the MyStrands desktop application at home can take their playlists and recommendations with them by signing in to by SMS at participating locations. MyStrands monitors your playlists in iTunes or Windows Media Player and suggests songs based on similar playlists from other users.

When a number of people are logged into Partystrands, the service will aggregate their playlists and recommendations, display which song is playing on a video projector (with cover art) and let users vote songs on the list up and down by SMS. Users will also be able to send photos they take at the bar to their MyStrands profile to record the evening and to the projection screen in the venue for sharing with everyone.

Why do I blog this? what I found interesting here is this notion of aggregation of content bound to specific locations. How will this shape a new experience of cultural consumption? Would it be so important that it would change spatial behavior?

The first RADAR

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Writing the chapter of my PhD dissertation about Mutual Location-Awareness, I inevitably ran across RADAR (Radio Detection And Ranging) metaphors, which is one of the most prominent model to show people and object's position in space. It seems that the first radar is from 1934 in France:

The patent is very intriguing.

Coexistence of virtual environment and cities

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WORKSPACE UNLIMITED is a set of projects that have a very interesting purpose:

Our projects consist of a series of networked virtual 3D environments which adapt and reconfigure multi player game technology. Each environment is designed to coexist with a city, art centre or public event to which it is both conceptually and thematically connected. The 3D virtual environments are connected together by the internet forming a new kind of enlarged public space for artistic expression and social exchange.

Why do I blog this? exploring the potentialities of both environments is important, especially if we want to go beyond current projects, creating new practices that benefit from both.

Challenges of context-awareness

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Via Mike Blackstock: Too Much Information ACM Queue vol. 4, no. 6 - July/August 2006 by Jim Christensen, Jeremy Sussman, Stephen Levy, William E. Bennett, Tracee Vetting Wolf, Wendy A. Kellogg, IBM Research. The article tackles context-awareness and its key challenges, with two examples of application (in new communication services that include the convergence of VoIP and traditional information technology). It starts by presenting the purpose of context-awareness and its relative difficulties:

"While the dream of intelligent devices has been alive for some time in the computer science community, it has not yet had a profound effect on the applications and services we use to get our jobs done. Why not? The simple answer is because it is hard to do well - or even well enough. The gap between what technology can "understand" as context and how people understand context is significant. Indeed, some critics have asserted that context-aware computing makes a fundamental error in trying to remove the human from the control loop in creating intelligent autonomous devices.2 A different tactic is to capture context but render its results unto humans to decide what actions to take"

The it presents the two applications ("The first, called Grapevine, helps a person communicate with another individual using an aggregated and filtered set of contextual information. The second, the IBM Rendezvous Service, helps people meet and talk on the telephone") and then draws some conclusions about their use. Here are some excerpts of the results I found pertinent to what I am doing:

A substantial semantic gap exists between the information that low-level sensors and programs can detect and the high-level ability and willingness of a person to communicate with someone else. What computer scientists commonly call context often has more to do with technology than with work situations, people, or frames of mind. While low-level information is useful, it is only a rough indicator of a user's social context. Such ambiguity can be socially useful; nevertheless, care must be taken in presenting and labeling sensor data in the interface. (...) Working out the problems and promise of context-aware applications and services depends on a complex interplay in a moving landscape of technical, organizational, social, and cultural factors. These include what is technically feasible in terms of the kinds of contextual information available; what is practically feasible in terms of assumptions that can be made about the distribution and nature of devices, bandwidth, and cost; what is possible within the constraints of our imaginations; and what will be perceived by users as valuable, as well as socially and culturally appropriate. For this reason, experience with deploying real applications and services at a realistic scale is essential.

Why do I blog this? because it clarifies the gap between context-awareness promises and current practices.