A Primer of Ubiquitous Computing Challenges and Trends

Background

We should begin by defining ubiquitous computing (also called ubicomp). Mark Weiser created this term, so he is considered one of the area’s fathers. He presents computer ubiquity as the idea of integrating computers seamlessly, invisibly enhancing the real world. Weiser (1991) formulates a “new way of thinking about computers in the world, one that takes into account the natural human environment and allows the computers themselves to vanish into the background” (p. 94). Computers will vanish as a consequence of human psychology: when people use things without consciously thinking about them, they focus beyond. This is a phenomenon defined by some philosophers and psychologists (Weiser, 1991): people cease to be aware of something when they use it sufficiently well and frequently. Philosopher Heidegger calls this phenomenon ready-to-hand¹ and Edmund Husserl calls it the horizon.²

Heidegger makes a phenomenological analysis of the way people deal with the world. According to him, our first behavior toward entities such as tools, devices, and systems within the world is one of use. These entities, viewed from their aspect of use, are called ready-to-hand. In “Being and Time”³, Heidegger (1996) affirms that