Thoughts on ‘The Computer for the 21st Century’
In this article Mark Wieser, CTO of Xerox PARC, talks about ubiquitous computing from the point of view of a man that lived among the best inventors and inventions in the field of computing during 1991. He talks about various computing devices that integrate into our natural environment at our houses and offices. He addresses the usage of tabs, pads, boards that take their place on our work desks and walls replacing the traditional paper and white boards. He talks about invisible computers that make a human’s life much more functional by just working in the background without ever concerning the human with their presence, an example of the now RFID tag is given to illustrate the functionality of the device and the way it enables multiple activities of a human.
Mark introduces the term ‘embodied virtuality’ inorder to refer to the process of integrating computers in our everyday lives. He talks about the issues that occur in order to accomplish a successful ubiquitous computing model. He mentions that the location and scale of computing devices as the only two challenges that are needed to be addressed by computer scientists. Each of the devices that were envisioned by Mark essentially replaced some utilitarian tool/thing in a room, from sticky notes to black boards. Considering that this could essentially mean that there could end up 100s of such devices in a room, locating such devices would essentially put a constraint on the network protocols at that time. Talking about the scale of the devices that would replace a blackboard, the utility and usability of such a device in that non-touch screen era posed a challenge in terms of scale.
Inorder to address the challenges posed by the devices Mark talks about three major requirements that would make ubiquitous computing a reality: cheap low-power computers, software for ubiquitous computing, and a network that ties them together. At that time the computing devices had a maximum processing speed in MIPS, this didn’t discourage Mark as he believed that the price of the devices would drastically decrease and the computing performance would increase in the coming years. The operating system of the devices had just been UNIX and the like at those days, he was counting on revolutions that would happen along the years which could potentially make the ubiquitous computing more interactive and communicable by other invisible devices. The inventions in Networking protocols although we’re not addressing distributed computing but they too did not discourage Mark from believing that ubiquitous computing is achievable.
Towards the end of the article Mark describes a woman’s life and work journey that is shaped by ubiquitous computers. His vision towards making ubiquitous computing a reality was that humans will spend more time and effort in interacting with the real world and other humans. His dream towards making humans spend more time on important things rather than feel information overload is far from reality even after 30 years. One reason for that is that not all of us share the vision of an ubiquitous computing system and its benefits. On the contrary we focus on making users stay hooked onto devices and applications.
I am awed by the vision of Mark Wieser and have been constantly looking for more information on him and his work, I could only find limited sources. Although there have been practical challenges in implementing his vision in the 30 years since the article was published we could have honestly done better in realising his dream. For his dream is more enriching with life than what we currently live with the constant need to check the device/applications that was built to make our life easier. It was a great vision and I am currently not motivated enough to make his vision a reality although it would be great to see it happen the way he intended it, with efficient technology of course.
One parallel that can be drawn from referring to the great tech visionaries such as Vannervar Bush and Mark Wieser himself is that the ones at the edge of technology, in terms of research, that have contributed to the field of computer science and humanity in a significant way tend to have visions that are more realistic than common public at that time, even now if Paul graham were to vision a future it would be more realistic and achievable compared to what I would envision.
