TechWatch report investigates 'invisible computing'
Nearly twenty years ago Mark Weiser of Xerox PARC outlined a new, grandiose vision for computing, one in which the computer disappears from view and becomes pervasive, embedded into our urban environments, our clothes and even our bodies (Weiser, 1991). Mark Weiser died before his dream of a ‘calm technology’, melting into the background of our lives, could be realised, but his vision - ubiquitous computing - has become one of the guiding aspirations of the computing community and has opened up a new frontier for research.
The Jisc-funded TechWatch service has published a short report from the British Computer Society's Computer Journal Lecture on the Grand Challenge of Ubiquitous Computing given by Professor Robin Milner, the noted Cambridge computer theoretician. The report looks at the scale and complexity of the technology involved in ‘ubicomp’ which raises fundamental questions, such as: will we be able to understand it? Will we be able to cope with the invisible computer?
These are certainly questions exercising Professor Milner, whose lecture forms the basis of this report. Ubicomp has become one of the six Grand Challenges of computer science that are being overseen by the UK Computing Research committee (UKCRC). These challenges are key goals in computer science that will take a decade or two of coordinated research to realise. The report asks what role education will have in the achievement of these Grand Challenges, and poses its own challenge to the education community – to make sure its voice is heard in these important, preliminary stages.
The full text of the lecture will be reproduced in a forthcoming issue of The Computer Journal (BCS: London) and the TechWatch short report is available from the TechWatch website.