Paul Dourish

The philosophical underpinnings of human-computer interaction and their consequences for future design.

The Foundations of Embodied Interaction

Where the Action is

Genevieve Bell

Ubiquitous computing (or ubicomp) is the label for a "third wave" of computing technologies. Following the eras of the mainframe computer and the desktop PC, ubicomp is characterized by small and powerful computing devices that are worn, carried, or embedded in the world around us. Computer scientist Paul Dourish and cultural anthropologist Genevieve Bell explore the vision that has driven the ubiquitous computing research program and the contemporary practices that have emerged--both the motivating mythology and the everyday messiness of lived experience. Derived from book jacket.

Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing

Divining a Digital Future

An argument that the material arrangements of information—how it is represented and interpreted—matter significantly for our experience of information and information systems. Virtual entities that populate our digital experience, like e-books, virtual worlds, and online stores, are backed by the large-scale physical infrastructures of server farms, fiber optic cables, power plants, and microwave links. But another domain of material constraints also shapes digital living: the digital representations sketched on whiteboards, encoded into software, stored in databases, loaded into computer memory, and transmitted on networks. These digital representations encode aspects of our everyday world and make them available for digital processing. The limits and capacities of those representations carry significant consequences for digital society. In The Stuff of Bits, Paul Dourish examines the specific materialities that certain digital objects exhibit. He presents four case studies: emulation, the creation of a “virtual” computer inside another; digital spreadsheets and their role in organizational practice; relational databases and the issue of “the databaseable”; and the evolution of digital networking and the representational entailments of network protocols. These case studies demonstrate how a materialist account can offer an entry point to broader concerns—questions of power, policy, and polity in the realm of the digital.

An Essay on the Materialities of Information

The Stuff of Bits

Adrian Friday

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, UbiComp 2006. The book presents 30 revised full papers, carefully reviewed and selected from 232 submissions. The papers address all current issues in the area of ubiquitous, pervasive and handheld computing systems and their applications. Topics include improving natural interaction, constructing ubicomp systems, embedding computation, understanding ubicomp and its consequences, and deploying ubicomp technologies.

Paul Dourish

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