Ubiquitous Computing: Shall we Understand It?
Ubiquitous Computing: Shall we Understand It?
复制标题
普适计算：我们应该理解它吗？
DOI：
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发表时间：
2006
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
R. Milner
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
R. Milner
过去 15 年来，普适计算已成为计算界的一个愿望。它的愿景是由 Mark Weiser [1] 开创的，计算实体群体（硬件和软件）将成为我们环境的有效组成部分，在没有我们持续指导的情况下执行支持我们广泛目标的任务，从而使我们在很大程度上不知道它们。愿景的出现是因为技术开始触手可及。这个简单的愿望引发了计算机科学及其他领域的问题。以下是其中的一些。社会问题：人们想要或需要什么样的普适计算系统（UCS），它们将如何改变人们的行为？技术问题：硬件实体（代表这样一个系统的传感器和效应器）将如何获取电力，以及它们通过什么媒介进行通信？工程问题：对于构成系统的总体和子总体（包括软件代理），每个数量级应采用哪些设计原则，以确保可靠的性能？基本问题：需要什么概念来指定和描述普遍系统、它们的子系统及其交互？英国计算研究委员会 (UKCRC) 开展了一项活动，为未来二十年的计算研究提出了许多重大挑战 [2]。这些挑战之一是普适计算：经验、设计和科学[3]，提出通过以紧密耦合的方式解决这四类问题来开发普适计算。对于传统软件来说，这些问题已经在不同程度上得到了解决，但由于无处不在的系统将高度具备的以下品质，这些问题被提高到了前所未有的难度。首先，由于我们在很大程度上不知道此类系统的活动，因此它们将不断做出迄今为止由人类做出的决策。其次，新技术将使此类系统变得庞大——比我们所知的任何系统都要大，包括万维网——而且设计和理解它们的难度肯定会随着它们的规模而非线性增长。第三，系统必须不断适应新的要求，保持可靠性并且不中断服务（我们将越来越依赖其连续性）。第四，虽然各个系统可能是独立设计的，但它们的普遍性将不可避免地导致它们之间出现计划外的交互。这种对我们只有模糊想法的未来系统的担忧，将为未来半个世纪的计算机科学定义一个新的特征。根据我们目前的知识，我们可以对这种混乱有什么理解？在回答这个问题时，揭露本次讲座标题中（有意的）含糊之处是有帮助的。问题是我们能理解它吗？可以被动解释：理解可能吗？，或主动解释：我们希望确保理解吗？最近的一份报告 [4] 对普适计算的风险和影响进行了令人钦佩的详细分析，但宣称（第 17 页）普适系统
Pervasive or ubiquitous computing has become an aspiration of the computing community in the last 15 years. Its vision, pioneered by Mark Weiser [1], is that populations of computing entities—hardware and software—will become an effective part of our environment, performing tasks that support our broad purposes without our continual direction, thus allowing us to be largely unaware of them. The vision arises because the technology begins to lie within our grasp. This simply stated aspiration arouses questions ranging across computer science and beyond. Here are a few of them. Social questions: what ubiquitous computing systems (UCSs) do people want or need, and how will they change people’s behaviour? Technological questions: how will the hardware entities—the sensors and effectors whose cooperation represents such a system—acquire power, and by what medium do they communicate? Engineering questions: for the populations and subpopulations—including software agents—that make up a system, what design principles should be adopted at each order of magnitude, to ensure dependable performance? Foundational questions: what concepts are needed to specify and describe pervasive systems, their subsystems and their interaction? The UK Computing Research Committee (UKCRC) has mounted an exercise posing a number of Grand Challenges for computing research over the next two decades [2]. One of these Challenges, Ubiquitous Computing: Experience, Design and Science [3], proposes to develop ubiquitous computing by tackling these four classes of question in a closely coupled manner. The questions are already addressed to a varying extent for conventional software, but they are raised to an unprecedented level of difficulty by the following qualities that ubiquitous systems will possess in high degree. First, since we shall be largely unaware of the activity of such systems, they will continually make decisions hitherto made by humans. Second, new technologies will allow such systems to be vast—orders of magnitude larger than any we know, including the Worldwide Web—and the difficulties of designing and understanding them will surely grow nonlinearly with their size. Third, the systems must adapt continually to new requirements, retaining reliability and without interrupting service (on whose continuity we shall increasingly depend). Fourth, though individual systems may be designed independently, their pervasive nature will inevitably lead to unplanned interaction between them. This tangle of concerns, about future systems of which we have only hazy ideas, will define a new character for computer science over the next half-century. What sense can we make of the tangle, from our present knowledge? In answering this, it is helpful to expose an (intended) ambiguity in the title of this lecture. The question Shall we understand it? can be interpreted passively:Will understanding be possible?, or actively: Do we wish to ensure understanding? A recent report [4] contains an admirably detailed analysis of the risks and effects of ubiquitous computing, but declares (p. 17) ubiquitous systems that