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。今天，这种系统的足迹已经远远超出了它们最初出现的工作环境，现在，毫不夸张地说，无处不在。结合数据科学的进步，特别是在人工智能的一般领域，这些正在实现全新的应用形式，并扩展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；它指出，通过对我们所居住的世界的数字化理解，空间与人类实践之间的关系可能会发生改变。这种变化需要丰富公众的想象力，让他们想象未来的地方可能是什么样子，以及如何理解它们。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、可持续的生活方式。借用丘吉尔的话：如果他说我们创造了我们的建筑，我们的建筑塑造了我们，那么未来场所中心的前提是，对场所的新理解（通过普适计算、数据科学和人工智能工具实现）可以与公众对可持续性和环境的关注相结合，帮助塑造更健康的场所，从而造就更健康的人。因此，该中心的目标是重新构想并进一步发展Mark Weiser对普适计算的最初设想。这样一来，它将把兰开斯特的开拓性DE项目凝聚在一起，创造出世界级的跨学科研究成果，将兰开斯特与当地社区、工业和政府联系在一起，使西北地区成为未来的试验台。

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.