Intimations of everyday life: Ubiquitous computing and the city

Anticipating ubiquitous computing: Logics to forecast technological futures

“…Inspired and troubled by the various ways in which particular types of future for ubicomp are, and have been, forecast (as well as by work such as: Anderson, 2007;Bell and Dourish, 2007;Bingham, 2008;Galloway, 2004), in this article I have described a politics of anticipation. It is not difficult to see how the techniques of anticipation can become programmatic, when arranged on 'macro' levels by large corporations for example, but, I think, there is always space for nuance and dissent that leads to a departure from such a regime.…”

“…The anticipatory impetus for ubicomp was present from the outset, as Bell and Dourish (2007) assert, in the shape of Mark Weiser's 'foundational' article, entitled 'The Computer for the 21 st Century' (for a cultural studies perspective, see also : Galloway, 2004). Weiser's (1991) description of computing devices for (and in) a proximate future came out of an interdisciplinary experimental approach at the Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC).…”

“…(Weiser, 1991, p. 74) In an influential Scientific American article Mark Weiser, then a Principal Scientist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC), elucidated his vision of 'ubiquitous computing' through the fictional world of 'Sal'. As many have asserted (for example: Bell and Dourish, 2007;Galloway, 2004), Weiser's depiction of computer use 'beyond the desktop' and as a 'part of the woodwork' spawned the research arena of ubiquitous computing (or 'ubicomp'). It is, however, difficult to tie down exactly what is variously meant by the now widespread term 'ubicomp'.…”

“…The empirical basis of this paper is a set of interviews conducted during Social scientists' investigations of ubicomp have been few but notable (see : Andrejevic, 2005;Crang and Graham, 2007;Dodge and Kitchin, 2007;Galloway, 2004). The vernacular is, however, familiar; ubicomp shares a vocabulary with popular, technologically concerned, future orientations.…”

Figuring ubicomp (out)

“…This construction of an opposition between cumbersome grey boxes, on the one hand, and invisible, ubiquitous computers that are only there to facilitate and support human interactions, on the other, allows people like Rheingold [30] or, a decade later, Galloway [11], to assert that the intellectual origins and inspiration for ubiquitous computing lie in the social and cultural rather than the technical side of PARC's research.…”