Open Display Networks : Towards A New Communications Medium for the 21 st Century

Today’s public displays effectively disappear: people have become so accustomed to their low utility that they ignore them. In contrast to Mark Weiser’s influential vision of the “Computer for the 21st Century,” however, public displays of the 21st century should not disappear. Instead they should become the backbone of a new global communications medium. The creation of this new communications medium requires significant innovation that can only occur through opening display networks to applications and content from a wide range of sources and in this paper we explore how this vision can be realised.