Interdisciplinary Foundations for Ubiquitous Computing

IT对社会的影响已经是深远的，重塑了工作、教育、政府、休闲、娱乐和家庭生活。强大的数字基础设施、无线网络和移动设备的出现，已经开始将计算机嵌入到日常生活的建筑、家具和个人织物中。虽然曾经我们会与一台电脑互动，但移动电话、数码相机、卫星导航、手持电脑和许多类似的设备如今在我们的日常活动中司空见惯。这种向‘普适计算’的转变是一个挑战，影响到计算机科学的方方面面，并对我们未来如何推理、构建和体验计算机系统产生了巨大的影响。这基本上是一项跨学科的努力，普适计算的进展取决于从计算科学、复杂分布式系统的工程和对其在社会环境中的使用的理解中获得的观点的成功融合。这意味着，除了对每个组成领域进行基础性研究外，我们还需要促进这些方面的互动和对话。一个关键问题是，泛在计算的跨学科基础尚未显现，涉及的每个不同社区之间的交流有限。之所以提出这一研究金建议，是因为有人担心，如果不在泛在计算所涉及的研究努力与开发方法和技术之间形成强有力的联系，让泛在计算的组成部分相互交谈，这一领域的进展将受到很大阻碍。在这一奖学金中，我寻求在我在形成跨学科社区方面的经验和我在赤道IRC内的工作的基础上，与这些不同的社区密切合作，以制定一套关键的跨学科原则、技术和方法，以帮助支持普适计算的未来进展。

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.