Ubiquity

Interface Seams

Ubiquity

June, 1999

Ubiquitous computing may be worth pursuing.

A material has been developed for storage and transmission of information. It is capable of displaying both images and text. Color support is available at moderately higher cost. While there are a variety of standard display formats, it can be manufactured in almost any size.

The display is solar powered. Manufactured and handled carefully, it can last longer than CD-ROM. It is flexible, and can be attached to many surfaces.

It has some downsides:

Duplication is fairly cumbersome.
High training costs (on the order of 3-10 years!)
High storage costs.

It took centuries to refine the art of paper.

What can be ubiquitous?

Pen that knows what it wrote
"Voice box" for dictation
Tool to show remote state (eg sculpture showing your family)

As hardware prices drop, power management improves, and more systems accommodate remote networked computing, we'll see less computers but there will be more of them than ever before.

[Written 9-15-1998.]