Social Issues in Ubiquitous Computing

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Evolving toward ubiquitous computing is the next step in technology. Computers will interact more and more with the environment. The social interactions are starting to be controlled using ubiquitous devices. Users have access to more information therefore social issues become important. In order to have a better understanding about the social issues in ubiquitous computing, aspects such as privacy of the individual, use and abuse of the state and opportunities for the individual empowerment will be discussed.

Mark Weiser defined ubiquitous computing in 1993 in his paper “Some Computer Science Issues in

Ubiquitous Computing” as “the method of enhancing computer use by making many computers available throughout the physical environment, but making them effectively invisible to the user”[1]. His vision consisted in hundreds of computers in a room, which could seem intimidating at first but will come to be invisible as people will use them unconsciously. If we take for example the objects in a room, such as wall notes, books, labels, folders, clocks, pieces of paper, even posters and we replace them with tabs, pads, board-size writing and display surfaces, then the room could contain about 100 tabs, 10 or 20 pads and one or two boards, so hundreds of computers in a room. In another paper called “The world is not a desktop” published in 1994 [2], Weiser says that a good tool is invisible, referring to the tool that does not intrude on our consciousness and the user can focus on the task and not on the tool itself. They are not invisible in themselves but as part of the context in use. Weiser’s bolder vision includes tabs with completely new functions such as active badges which can identify the user, this way keeping track of the p...

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... parents use the technology for the children’ safety. If someone older would be monitored at each moment of the day, for example a 24-year-old person or even a 84-year-old person, this would be a lack of privacy. Sometimes the employers monitor their employees in order to see what web pages they access. So from the privacy point of view, these kind of services can be in the advantage or disadvantage of the user.

References

[1] Mark Weiser, “Some Computer Science Issues in Ubiquitous Computing”, Communications of the ACM, July 1993

[2] Mark Weiser, “The world is not a desktop”, Interactions; January 1994

[3] Mark Weiser, “The Computer for the 21st Century “, "Scientific American" magazine; September 1991

[4] Lecture’s notes, “Lecture 2: Some definitions”, Nick Ryan; January 2011

[5] Mark Weiser, John Seely Brown, “The coming age of calm technology”; Oct 1996

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