wahlau's online hut

if you have never learn anything about Mark and his vision on Ubiquitous Computing , read the following scenario suggested by him:

Sal awakens: she smells coffee. A few minutes ago her alarm clock,
alerted by her restless rolling before waking, had quietly asked
"coffee?", and she had mumbled "yes." "Yes" and "no" are the only words
it knows.

Sal looks out her windows at her neighborhood. Sunlight and a
fence are visible through one, but through others she sees electronic
trails that have been kept for her of neighbors coming and going during
the early morning. Privacy conventions and practical data rates prevent
displaying video footage, but time markers and electronic tracks on the
neighborhood map let Sal feel cozy in her street.

Glancing at the windows to her kids' rooms she can see that
they got up 15 and 20 minutes ago and are already in the kitchen.
Noticing that she is up, they start making more noise.

At breakfast Sal reads the news. She still prefers the paper
form, as do most people. She spots an interesting quote from a
columnist in the business section. She wipes her pen over the
newspaper's name, date, section, and page number and then circles the
quote. The pen sends a message to the paper, which transmits the quote
to her office.

Electronic mail arrives from the company that made her garage door
opener. She lost the instruction manual, and asked them for help. They
have sent her a new manual, and also something unexpected -- a way to
find the old one. According to the note, she can press a code into the
opener and the missing manual will find itself. In the garage, she
tracks a beeping noise to where the oil-stained manual had fallen
behind some boxes. Sure enough, there is the tiny tab the manufacturer
had affixed in the cover to try to avoid E-mail requests like her own.

On the way to work Sal glances in the foreview mirror to check
the traffic. She spots a slowdown ahead, and also notices on a side
street the telltale green in the foreview of a food shop, and a new one
at that. She decides to take the next exit and get a cup of coffee
while avoiding the jam.

Once Sal arrives at work, the foreview helps her to quickly
find a parking spot. As she walks into the building the machines in her
office prepare to log her in, but don't complete the sequence until she
actually enters her office. On her way, she stops by the offices of
four or five colleagues to exchange greetings and news.

Sal glances out her windows: a grey day in silicon valley, 75
percent humidity and 40 percent chance of afternoon showers; meanwhile,
it has been a quiet morning at the East Coast office. Usually the
activity indicator shows at least one spontaneous urgent meeting by
now. She chooses not to shift the window on the home office back three
hours -- too much chance of being caught by surprise. But she knows
others who do, usually people who never get a call from the East but
just want to feel involved.

The telltale by the door that Sal programmed her first day on the job
is blinking: fresh coffee. She heads for the coffee machine.

Coming back to her office, Sal picks up a tab and "waves" it to
her friend Joe in the design group, with whom she is sharing a virtual
office for a few weeks. They have a joint assignment on her latest
project. Virtual office sharing can take many forms--in this case the
two have given each other access to their location detectors and to
each other's screen contents and location. Sal chooses to keep
miniature versions of all Joe's tabs and pads in view and
3-dimensionally correct in a little suite of tabs in the back corner of
her desk. She can't see what anything says, but she feels more in touch
with his work when noticing the displays change out of the corner of
her eye, and she can easily enlarge anything if necessary.

A blank tab on Sal's desk beeps, and displays the word "Joe" on
it. She picks it up and gestures with it towards her liveboard. Joe
wants to discuss a document with her, and now it shows up on the wall
as she hears Joe's voice:

"I've been wrestling with this third paragraph all morning and it still has the wrong tone. Would you mind reading it?"

"No problem."

Sitting back and reading the paragraph, Sal wants to point to a
word. She gestures again with the "Joe" tab onto a nearby pad, and then
uses the stylus to circle the word she wants:

"I think it's this term 'ubiquitous'. Its just not in common
enough use, and makes the whole thing sound a little formal. Can we
rephrase the sentence to get rid of it?"

"I'll try that. Say, by the way Sal, did you ever hear from Mary Hausdorf?"

"No. Who's that?"

"You remember, she was at the meeting last week. She told me she was going to get in touch with you."

Sal doesn't remember Mary, but she does vaguely remember the
meeting. She quickly starts a search for meetings in the past two weeks
with more than 6 people not previously in meetings with her, and finds
the one. The attendees' names pop up, and she sees Mary. As is common
in meetings, Mary made some biographical information about herself
available to the other attendees, and Sal sees some common background.
She'll just send Mary a note and see what's up. Sal is glad Mary did
not make the biography available only during the time of the meeting,
as many people do...

taken from Mark Weiser 's The Computer for the 21st Century

Today many are still trying to achieve part of this vision. There are lots to do, but we are closer to target day to day, hopefully :)