Interdisciplinary Foundations for Ubiquitous Computing

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The impact of IT on society has already been profound, reshaping work, education, government, leisure, entertainment, and home life. The emergence of powerful digital infrastructures, wireless networks and mobile devices has started to embed computers into the architectures, furniture and personal fabric of everyday life. While once we would interact with one computer mobile phones, digital cameras, satellite navigation, handheld computers and a host of similar devices are today commonplace in our everyday activities. This shift to 'Ubiquitous Computing' is a challenge that affects all aspects of computer science and has massive implications for how we might reason about, build and experience computer systems in the future. This is a fundamentally interdisciplinary endeavour and advances in Ubiquitous Computing depend on the successful blending of perspectives drawn from the science of computing, the engineering of complex distributed systems and the understanding of their use in social settings. This means that in addition to undertaking fundamental research into each of the constituent areas we also need to promote interaction and dialogue across these perspectives. A key problem is that the interdisciplinary foundations of ubiquitous computing have yet to emerge and communication between each of the different communities involved is limited. This fellowship proposal is motivated by the concerned that without the formation of strong links between the research endeavours involved in ubiquitous computing and the development of approaches and techniques to allow the constituent parts of ubiquitous computing to talk to each other progress in this area will be significant inhibited. Within this fellowship I seek to build upon my experiences in the formation of interdisciplinary communities and my work within the Equator IRC to work closely with these different communities in order to develop a key set of interdisciplinary principles, technique and approaches to help underpin future advances in ubiquitous computing.