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W. Keith Edwards Trevor Smith Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA
Mark W. Newman Trevor Smith Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA
Jana Sedivy Trevor Smith Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA
Shahram Izadi University of Nottingham

International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking archive
Proceedings of the 8th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking table of contents
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
SESSION: Challenges table of contents
Pages: 279 - 286
Year of Publication: 2002
ISBN:1-58113-486-X

Abstract:
Interoperability among a group of devices, applications, and services is typically predicated on those entities having some degree of prior knowledge of each another. In general, they must be written to understand the type of thing with which they will
interact, including the details of communication as well as semantic knowledge such as when and how to communicate. This paper presents a case for “recombinant computing”—a set of common interaction patterns that leverage mobile code to allow rich interactions among computational entities with only limited a priori knowledge of one another. We have been experimenting with a particular embodiment of these ideas, which we call Speakeasy. It is designed to support ad hoc, end user configurations of hardware and software, and provides patterns for data exchange, user control, discovery of new services and devices, and contextual awareness.

My Discussion:
From a perspective of servicing the user, this paper has it completely backwards. It proposes a framework for making ubiquitous computing extensible, starting off with formulating premisses about what technology should be like to interconnect all kinds of devices with each other to allow users to do things. One of the premisses is even that the users will be ultimate arbiters of what connections will be made and are desireable, since in this extensible framework no functions, capabilities, or permissions can really be defined for new classes of devices and data transfer. The paper then ends with the note in the challenges section that making the UI to this extensible framework will be hard. The paper describing this framework to allow users to navigate the landscape of ubiquitous electronic devices thus proves itself to not be user-centered at all, begging the question whether this framework will actually give the user enough useable, clear, and humane information to make informed decisions about what devices should be connected and how.