Future Places: A Digital Economy Centre on Understanding Place Through Pervasive Computing

未来空间中心将探索无处不在和无处不在的技术、物联网和新的数据科学工具如何让人们重新想象他们未来的空间可能是什么。今天，这类系统的足迹远远超出了它们最初出现的工作环境，现在完全是无处不在。再加上数据科学的进步，特别是在人工智能的一般领域，这些都使全新的应用形式成为可能，并扩大了我们对如何塑造我们的物理空间的理解。这些趋势的结果是，这些系统的潜在影响不再局限于工作环境或科学想象；它指向所有环境，在这些环境中，空间和人类实践之间的关系可能会通过对我们居住的世界的数字理解而改变。这样的变化需要丰富公众对未来可能是什么地方以及如何理解它们的想象。特别是，它指出了使用普及技术(如物联网)的新方法，通过创造适当的场所来塑造健康、可持续的生活。套用丘吉尔的话说：如果他说我们建造我们的建筑，我们的建筑来塑造我们，那么未来地点中心的前提是，(在普适计算、数据科学和人工智能工具的推动下)对地点的新理解可以与公众对可持续发展和环境的关注结合起来，帮助塑造更健康的地方，从而让人更健康。因此，该中心的目标是重新想象和进一步发展马克·威瑟关于无处不在计算的最初愿景。通过这样做，它将凝聚兰开斯特开创性的DE项目，并创建世界级的跨学科研究努力，将兰开斯特与当地社区、行业和政府联系在一起，使西北地区成为可能的试验台。

The Future Places Centre will explore how ubiquitous and pervasive technologies, the IoT, and new data science tools can let people reimagine what their future spaces might be. Today, the footprint of such systems extends well beyond the work environments where they first showed themselves and are now, quite literally, ubiquitous. Combined with advances in data science, particularly in the general area of AI, these are enabling entirely new forms of applications and expanding our understanding of how we can shape our physical spaces. The result of these trends is that the potential impact of these systems is no longer confined to work settings or the scientific imagination; it points towards all contexts in which the relationship between space and human practice might be altered through digitally-enabled comprehension of the worlds we inhabit. Such change necessitates enriching the public imagination about what future places might be and how they might be understood. In particular, it points towards new ways of using pervasive technologies (such as the IoT), to shape healthy, sustainable living through the creation of appropriate places. To paraphrase Churchill: if he said we make our buildings, and our buildings come to shape us, the Future Places centre starts from the premise that new understanding of places (enabled by pervasive computing, data science and AI tools), can be combined with a public concern for sustainability and the environment to help shape healthier places and thus make healthier people. It is thus the goal of the centre to reimagine and develop further Mark Weiser's original vision of ubiquitous computing. As it does this so it will cohere Lancaster's pioneering DE projects and create a world-class interdisciplinary research endeavour that binds Lancaster to the local community, to industry and government, making the North West a test-bed for what might be.