Rachel

Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing, by Malcolm McCullough is about Pervasive Computing from an architect’s point of view. Design will be an important factor in pervasive computing; without it the embedding of computers in everyday life will be overwhelming. There will be “information pollution,” with too many gadgets too handle. As McCullough wrote, “You don’t have to distrust technology to want to keep it in its place (p. 3).”

The new field of interaction design mediates how significant technologies will be in our lives by deciding how many degrees of interactivity there will be between humans and computing objects. With ubiquitous computing, there will be microchips in everything around us. In fact, there nearly already are. At Intel less than one-quarter of the chips made actually go into computers. The need for interaction designers is especially clear when one considers MIT’s Project Oxygen’s glimpse of the future, “In the future, computation will be human-centered. It will be freely available everywhere like batteries and power-sockets, or oxygen in the air we breathe. It will enter into the human world, handling our goals and needs and helping us to do more while doing less (p. 7).” Interaction designers need to take a hand in pervasive computing to stop information pollution from overwhelming users. “Its purveyors assume no more responsibility for information pollution than nineteenth-century industrialists did for dumping sludge in the river (p. 17).” Interaction designers must be architects, sociologists, psychologists, and management consultants all rolled into one in order to keep a firm hold on pervasive computing.

We are experiencing a paradigm shift from computers to computing, from cyberspace to ubiquitous computing. “Information technology has become ambient social infrastructure. This allies it with architecture. No longer just made of objects, computing now consists of situations (p. 21).” Users have certain expectations of what computing and technology will do to their lives. Interaction designers have to monitor “expectation management,” because “What technology can do may not be so important as what we want to do with it, and whether that is reasonable (p. 23).” With pervasive computing, the desktop computer will be obliterated. It has already been around for twenty years, a record for a piece of information technology. The technology and information that is having trouble being contained within the PC will be unleashed, “Pervasive computing has been hailed as an escape from the desktop and a chance to start over. On the other hand, unless design can intervene, it is also a chance for computer technology to become even worse, and far less escapable (p. 68).”

McCullough fears that designers and users are ignoring the new trend of ubiquitous computing. He fears that through their ignorance it is falling into the hands of major corporations and governments, who will use it for surveillance purposes. The fear of surveillance does not scare people as much as it should, however, because the benefits of computing outweigh this negative. Also, McCullough points out, “omnicompetance” will be low. There will be too much information gathered through the type of surveillance that can come through ubicomp, and not enough communication or time to keep track of it all. Once pervasive computing is paid attention to by interaction designers, it will be put in the periphery. It will become invisible, so as to be simple for users to adapt to in their lives, “…information appliances let you carry out particular activities without having to be aware of any computers that may be involved (p. 70).”

This book was meant to be a manual for architects looking to become intellectual designers. Although it was a bit bogged down with architectural jargon, it was still an interesting look at the futuristic trend of ubiquitous computing.