The Invisible Assistant

Ubiquitous computing seeks to place computers everywhere around us—into the very fabric of everyday life1—so that our lives are made better. Whether it is improving our job productivity, our ability to stay connected with family and friends, or our entertainment, the goal is to find ways to put technology to work for us by getting all those computers—large and small, visible and invisible—to work together. Since Mark Weiser presented the ubiquitous computing vision in 1991, we have made significant progress in creating faster, smaller, and lower-power computing devices.We have just barely begun, however, to tackle the problem of how we get these devices to interact effectively with us and with each other.