What Is Ubicomp?

Ubicomp is a portmanteau of "ubiquitous" and "computing." The term "ubiquitous" means being everywhere at once, or everywhere if you look hard enough, like the man who played Jesus in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. The term "ubiquitous computing" was coined by Mark Weiser in 1991 and referred to an idea related to expanding an interface so it seems pervasive in a given environment. This can include anything from a digital watch that tells time on your wrist but also can receive text messages, or it can mean that when you're sitting at your desk, your computer is watching everything you do and trying to guess what you are following action is going to be based on what it thinks is most likely (based on data it's collecting). The name "ubicomp" comes from the idea that ubiquitous computing should be seen as a field of study instead of just one specific thing. It's not just about smartwatches or smart cars. It's about understanding how we interact with all technology in our daily lives and how that might change over time as technology evolves. When you look at the history of ubiquitous computing, it's easy to see how far we've come. Developers and engineers have been capable of distributing computing systems across wireless technologies and hardware sets that are wirelessly connected to make today's progress in this field. Body area network systems that track human behavior as it moves across the body and other comprehensive interfaces that make computing seem ubiquitous have been made possible by radio frequency technology and wireless sensor networks. Ubiquitous computing is a little like the movie "Inception." If you need to get more familiar with the film, it's about a guy who can enter into other people's dreams and manipulate them. In the movie, he uses this power to infiltrate another person's mind and steal information from his subconscious. In real life, if we were trying to do this, we'd need some interface to communicate with each person's brain to extract knowledge from their consciousnesses. Ubiquitous computing allows us to effectively turn everyone into an interface for our needs.