Pervasive Computing Revisited
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GUEST EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION Pervasive Computing Revisited n 2001, Mahadev Satyanarayanan Bahl, Gaetano Borriello, Nigel Davies, Hans (Satya) published a paper, “Pervasive Gellersen, Jason Hong, Liviu Iftode, Anupam Computing: Vision and Challenges,” Joshi, David Kotz, James Landay, Marc Lang- in IEEE Personal Communications.1 heinrich, Dejan Milojicic, and Dan Siewiorek. This was the first paper to substantively It has also inspired at least nine papers with Iexplore the implications of Mark Weiser’s 1991 more than 500 citations each (see the “Inspiring vision for a real-world systems infrastructure.2 Others: Related Work” sidebar). It provided the conceptual foundations for what Looking back at the vision Satya outlined much of the computing indus- and comparing it to today’s reality, we see that try now calls the Internet of our community has made progress, but we still Maria R. Ebling Things (IoT). It also developed have a long way to go. For example, in two sce- IBM T.J. Watson Research Center a taxonomy showing the deep narios he outlines, we can see aspects of every- Roy Want relationships between distrib- day pervasive computing—we use cloud storage Google uted systems, mobile comput- services that automatically sync our electronic ing, and pervasive computing documents between devices, and we identify (IoT). You might not realize which documents to maintain on each of our it, but the paper also inspired devices. But many aspects of his scenarios are the creation of our own publication, IEEE Per- more distant. For example, my smartphone has vasive Computing, with Satya serving as the never told me to move to a different area to get founding Editor in Chief. better network service. Last year, the IEEE Pervasive Computing A Look Back editorial board decided that after slightly more Satya’s paper has earned almost 3,000 cita- than 15 years, this would be a good time to look tions and has inspired many well-known au- back at Satya’s vision, review the challenges thors whose names are synonymous with the he laid out for our community, and evaluate pervasive computing field, including Victor what has been achieved in making the vision a Published by the IEEE CS n 1536-1268/17/$33.00 © 2017 IEEE PERVASIVE computing 17 GUEST EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION Inspiring Others: Related Work he following important works were all inspired by Satya’s • J.I. Hong and J.A. Landay, “An Architecture for Privacy- T 2001 paper, “Pervasive Computing: Vision and Sensitive Ubiquitous Computing,” Proc. 2nd Int’l Conf. Mobile Challenges,” in IEEE Personal Communication: Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), 2004, pp. 177– 189; http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id5990 087. • D.S. Milojicic et al., Peer-to-Peer Computing, tech. report • D. Cook and S.K. Das, Smart Environments: Technology, Proto- HPL-2002-57 (R.1), HP Labs, 2002; www.hpl.hp.com/techre- cols and Applications, John Wiley & Sons, 2004. ports/2002/HPL-2002-57R1.pdf. • L. Kagal, T. Finin, and A. Joshi, “A Policy Language for a Per- • D. Garlan et al., “Project Aura: Toward Distraction-Free vasive Computing Environment,” Proc. IEEE 4th Int’l Workshop Pervasive Computing,” IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 1, no. Policies for Distributed Systems and Networks, 2003; http:// 2, 2002, pp. 22–31; http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/ ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1206958/. document/1012334. • D.J. Cook and S.K. Das, “How Smart Are Our Environments? • D. Saha and A. Mukherjee, “Pervasive Computing: A Paradigm An Updated Look at the State of the Art,” Pervasive and Mo- for the 21st Century,” Computer, vol. 36, no. 3, 2003, pp. 25–31; bile Computing, vol. 3, no. 2, 2007; https://doi.org/10.1016/j. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1185214. pmcj.2006.12.001 • M. Pantic and L.J.M. Rothkrantz, “Toward an Affect-Sensitive • E. Aarts, J. Korst, and W.F.J. Verhaegh, “Algorithms Multimodal Human-Computer Interaction,” Proc. IEEE, vol. in Ambient Intelligence,” Phillips Research Book Se- 91, no. 9, 2003, pp. 1370–1390; http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ ries, vol. 2, Springer, 2004; https://link.springer.com/ abstract/document/1230215. chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-0703-9_1. reality. This special issue is a retrospec- how cyber-foraging systems might In this article, he categorizes pervasive tive on that vision. reach mainstream deployment. devices into three tiers: the top tier (tab- In “Powering Pervasive Comput- lets, smartphones, and so on), middle In This Issue ing Systems,” Shwetak Patel and tier (TVs, refrigerators, thermostats, We open with an interview with Satya Joshua Smith examine the progress and so on), and bottom tier (including in which he looks back at the challenges made in power delivery and manage- RFID tags; sensors; and heating, ven- he identified in 2001, noting what he ment over the past 15 years, discuss- tilation, and air conditioning systems). missed and highlighting what has been ing today’s trends in advancing this He then describes six types of privacy more difficult than expected. The inter- important area. They examine power- concerns: the ease with which people view touches on privacy, smart spaces, harvesting approaches as well as power are aware of what is being sensed, the and user distraction and intent. It also transfer through both near-field and time scope of the sensing, the number explores the relationship between per- far-field mechanisms. They also point of input and output capabilities the vasive computing and both IoT and out the need to architect pervasive sensing technology can use to interact cloud computing. We think you will computing systems that recognize and with users, the amount of software find Satya’s observations insightful. embrace the power limitations of dif- that can run on the device, the exis- One of the key ideas identified in Satya’s ferent technologies while minimizing tence of third-party software that can seminal paper is cyber foraging—he the need for power at the most energy- be installed and can run on the device, argued that future mobile devices constrained layers of the system. They and the amount of support manufac- would have to acquire the resources also point out that we have biological turers provide in terms of fixing bugs they need from the environment examples of systems that are millions and upgrading software. Hong then around them. In “Cyber Foraging: of times more energy efficient than cur- considers each of these dimensions Fifteen Years Later,” Rajesh Krishna rent technologies, so they’re optimistic across each device tier, giving readers Balan and Jason Flinn examine the about the outlook for continued ad- a good sense of the range of concerns progress that has been made in this vances in energy efficiency. that must be considered when build- area. In particular, they discuss seam- Jason Hong shares his thoughts ing a new device or installing a device less cyber foraging and look at what about privacy in pervasive computing in a home. technical challenges remain, how those systems in his article, “The Privacy Finally, in “Pervasive Data Science,” gaps hamper adoption, and when and Landscape of Pervasive Computing.” Nigel Davies and Sarah Clinch make 18 PERVASIVE computing www.computer.org/pervasive the AUTHORS the case that the intersection between Maria R. Ebling is a director at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Her pervasive computing and data science research interests include pervasive computing, context-aware computing, entails some unique challenges that must mobile computing, distributed systems, privacy, and human-computer inter- action. Ebling received her PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon be addressed. Examples of applications University. Contact her at [email protected]. at this intersection, which they discuss, include augmented cognition to improve human abilities, autonomous vehicles to transform our transportation infra- Roy Want is a research scientist at Google. His research interests include mo- structure, and smart spaces to improve bile and ubiquitous computing. Want received his PhD from Cambridge Uni- our physical environment. They out- versity. He is an ACM and IEEE Fellow. Contact him at [email protected]. line five challenges specific to pervasive data and cover the entire data pipeline. These challenges, like those of pervasive computing more broadly, will require an interdisciplinary approach. The article walks readers through two use cases demonstrating the end-to-end challenges technologies converge with research REFERENCES of pervasive data science. Ultimately, progress on the many fundamental Davies and Clinch argue that pervasive problems discussed in this paper,” was 1. M. Satyanarayanan, “Pervasive Com- puting: Vision and Challenges,” IEEE data science will transform our ability to most certainly true. We are well into Personal Comm., vol. 8, no. 4, 2001, pp. achieve the goals of ubiquitous comput- the second decade of the 21st century, 10 –17. ing outlined by Weiser. Readers looking and we continue to see many research 2. M. Weiser, “The Computer for the 21st Cen- for a thesis topic should find the chal- initiatives designed to solve the chal- tury,” Scientific Am., Sept. 1991, pp. 66–75. lenges presented in this paper inspiring. lenges that Satya laid out for us in this one, short article. It’s always amazing to atya’s prediction that the “early see how Satya can keep so many people Read your subscriptions decades of the 21st century busy solving difficult and meaty prob- through the myCS will be a period of excitement lems, but he seems to do it again and publications portal at http://mycs.computer.org. S and ferment, as new hardware again! Call for Articles IEEE Pervasive Computing seeks accessible, useful papers on the latest peer-reviewed developments in pervasive, mobile, and ubiquitous computing. Topics include hardware technology, software infrastructure, real-world sensing and Author guidelines: interaction, human-computer interaction, www.computer.org/mc/ and systems considerations, including pervasive/author.htm deployment, scalability, security, and privacy.