A Historical View of Context

Abstract

Abstract. This paper re-examines a number of the approaches, origins and ideals of context-aware systems design, looking particularly at the way that the past influences what we do in our ongoing activity. As a number of sociologists and philosophers have pointed out, past social interaction, as well as past use of the heterogeneous mix of media, tools and artifacts that we use in our everyday activity, influence our ongoing interaction with the people and media at hand. We suggest that the past is thus part of one's current context, and can be seen as combining and interweaving the temporal and subjective patterns of individuals' use of heterogeneous media as well as objectively structured representations of individual media. Based on this theoretical discussion, we present a number of critiques, examples and suggestions for systems designs that reflect this historical aspect of context, and which make good use of the past in supporting ongoing user activity.

Picking Pockets on the Lawn: The Development of Tactics and Strategies in a Mobile Game

“…For example, pre-existing infrastructures and the 'old media' environment have been shown to influence new infrastructures in ways that were not anticipated by designers [1,6]. We take a historical view of context [7], namely that past social interaction, as well as past use of the heterogeneous mix of media, tools and artifacts that make up users' activity, influence users' ongoing interaction. Patterns of use temporally and subjectively combine and interconnect different media.…”

“…as a tool they use in making the system transparent. However, Weiser's narrow design focus, concentrating only on transparent use, is at odds with the findings of user studies of how people develop their use of ubicomp systems through experience of both transparent and analytic use, and it clashes with the theory from which the transparency ideal was drawn [7]. Transparent and analytic use are mutually interdependent, with the former unavoidably influenced by analytic activity such as handling 'breakdowns', working on or adapting it, learning about it, teaching others how to use it, considering how to act so that it works better, and considering how to present oneself to others through it.…”

Using Mobile Technology to Create Flexible Learning Contexts

“…An entity is a person, place, or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user and an application, including the user and applications themselves". This has been critiqued by Dourish (2004) who proposes greater attention be paid to the nature of human activity, and Chalmers (2004) who highlights the way that history influences ongoing activity. He suggests that an individual's experience and history is part of her current context.…”

Of Corals and Web Portals: Towards a Digital Representation of Risk for the Cold-Water Corals in the Oil and Gas Sector

“…EnviroTime embodies the process of reduction and objectification undergone by the environmental data that is due to the formal representational schemas of corporate technologies. It is not a question whether to reduce the environmental context, but how (Chalmers, 2004). Tools to facilitate the rendering of contextual elements could be coordination mechanisms (CM) (Cabitza and Simone, 2013).…”