On the Way to Pervasive Computing

Many predict that the computing environment of the future will be characterized by the presence of numerous invisible sensors and computing elements, autonomously interacting with each other to dynamically construct and provide services to users that enter and leave the environment. The software challenges to turn such pervasive or ubiquitous computing environments into reality are enormous, to say nothing of the hardware and social challenges. These challenges question many of the assumptions we are used to making and many of the solutions we are used to applying in our current software systems. In this talk, I will review some of the work of my group in the areas of software components, security and access control, and device independent Web access and then analyze where our solutions are lacking and must be adapted fo r pervasive computing.