Intimate Ubiquitous Computing
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Intimate Ubiquitous Computing Genevieve Bell Intel Research Tim Brooke Intel Research Elizabeth Churchill FX Palo Alto Laboratory Eric Paulos Intel Research Date: Sunday, 12 October 2003 Time: 09:00 - 17:00 Where: UbiComp 2003, Blakely Room, Westin Hotel, Seattle, WA URL: http://www.intimateornot.com Ubiquitous computing has long been associated with intimacy. Embedded in the literature we see intimacy portrayed as: knowledge our appliances and applications have of us; physical closeness, incarnated on the body as wearable computing and in the body as nanobots; and computer mediated connection with friends, lovers, confidantes and colleagues. As appliances and computation move away from the desktop, and as designers move toward designing for emotion and social connection rather than usability and utility, we are poised to design technologies that are explicitly intimate and/or intimacy promoting. This workshop will: critically reflect on notions of intimacy; consider cultural and ethical issues in designing intimate technologies; and explore potential socio- technical design methods for intimate computing. Table of Contents Workshop Proposal Paper: Intimate (Ubiquitous) Computing 3 Genevieve Bell, Tim Brooke, Elizabeth Churchill, and Eric Paulos Accepted Workshop Papers: Reflections on Friendster, Trust and Intimacy 7 Danah Boyd, (UC Berkeley) Intimate Media and Ambient Intelligence 11 Jon Cass, Lorna Gouden, Slava Kozlov, and Fiona Rees (Philips Design) Reality Instant Messaging 15 Mei Chuah (Accenture) Tracing Technological Intimacies: UbiComp Assemblages 19 Anne Galloway (Carleton University) The Sensing Beds 23 Elizabeth Goodman and Marion Misilim (ITP NYU) Of Blogs and Journals: How We Express Our Most Intimate Thoughts 26 Gillian Hayes (Georgia Tech) Scale, Form, and Time: Creating Connected Sociable Spaces 30 Karrie Karahalios and Judith Donath (MIT Media Lab) Designing for Intimacy: Bridging the Interaction Challenges of Conversation 34 Kristine Nagel and Gregory Abowd (Georgia Tech) My Trombone 38 Trevor Pering (Intel Research) Utilizing Online Communities to Facilitate Physical World Interactions 42 Mike Perkowitz (University of Washington), Matthai Philipose (Intel Research) and Joseph McCarthy (Intel Research) Appropriate Expressions of Intimacy: Lessons of Digital Jewelry and Large Displays 46 Daniel Russell (IBM Almaden) 3° and the Net Generation: Designing for Inner Circles of Friends 50 Melora Zaner, EK Chung, and Tammy Savage, (Microsoft) Contact: [email protected] Intimate (Ubiquitous) Computing Genevieve Bell*, Tim Brooke*, Elizabeth Churchill+, Eric Paulos~ *Intel Research +FX Palo Alto ~Intel Research Intel Corporation Laboratory, 2150 Shattuck #1300 Hillsboro, OR 97124 3400 Hillview Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704 [email protected] Palo Alto, CA 94304 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT Ubiquitous Computing to: address and account for people’s Ubiquitous computing has long been associated with embodied, lived experiences; explore the ways in which intimacy. Within the UbiComp literature we see intimacy computing technology could and should be more intimate; portrayed as: knowledge our appliances and applications and join us in considering possible pitfalls along the design have about us and the minutiae of our day-to-day lives; path to such intimacy. physical closeness, incarnated on the body as wearable Intimacy as a cultural category/construct computing and in the body as ‘nanobots’; and computer What might intimacy have to do with technology and mediated connection with friends, lovers, confidantes and computers, beyond the obvious titillation factor? In the colleagues. As appliances and computation move away United States in particular and the west more broadly, there from the desktop, and as designers move toward designing is a persistent slippage between intimacy and sex, which is for emotion and social connection rather than usability and not to say that there isn’t a place to talk about the utility, we are poised to design technologies that are relationship between sex, intimacy and technology [see explicitly intimate and/or intimacy promoting. This 15]. However, in this workshop, we want to cast our net workshop will: critically reflect on notions of intimacy; more broadly. We are interested in other constructions of consider cultural and ethical issues in designing intimate intimacy; intimacy as something that relates to our technologies; and explore potential socio-technical design innermost selves, something personal, closely felt. Such a methods for intimate computing. construction could include love, closeness, or spirituality. Keywords Or perhaps it is in the way we understand, feel and talk Intimacy, computing, emotion, identity, body, play, about our lives, our bodies, our identities, our souls. In all bioethics, design methods, socio-technical design these ways, intimacy transcends technology, and has a role INTRODUCTION to play in shaping it. As we move towards designing for Intimate. adj. Inmost, deep seated, pertaining to or connecting communication, emotion, reflection, exploration and with the inmost nature or fundamental character of the thing; relationship, we need to critically reassess our reliance in essential, intrinsic ... Pertaining to the inmost thoughts or design on outmoded conventions and old models of feelings, proceeding from, concerning, or affecting one's inmost computation and connection. We need to employ new self, closely personal. metaphors and create new models. We inhabit a world in which the classic computing A BRIEF HISTORY OF (INTIMATE) UBIQUITOUS paradigm of a PC sitting on your desk is giving way to a COMPUTING more complicated and nuanced vision of computing Having said that, there has been an idea of intimate technologies and power. This next era is predicated on a computing for as long as there has been a vision of sense that the appliances and algorithms of the future will ubiquitous computing. The two are inexorably linked in the respond better to our needs, delivering ‘smarter’ more pages of the September 1991 issue of Scientific American. context-appropriate, computing power. Underlying such a In that month’s issue of the magazine, Mark Weiser, vision is the notion that computers in their many forms will articulated his vision of ubiquitous computing – “we are be pervasive and anticipatory. Arguably, to achieve this, trying to conceive a new way of thinking about computers computing appliances will have to become more intimate, in the world, one that takes into account the natural human more knowing of who we are and what we desire, more environment and allows computers themselves to vanish woven into the fabric of our daily lives, and possibly into the background” [25]. In the article that follows, Alan woven into the fabric of our (cyber)bodies. Kay used ‘intimate’ as a modifier to computing in an essay In this workshop we address the notion of ‘intimate reflecting on the relationship between education, computers computing’. We invite designers within the area of and networks [10]. He wrote, “In the near future, all the be possible if they were proximate. Examples include representations that human beings have invented will be explicit actions (e.g. erotically directed exoskeletons [19]), instantly accessible anywhere in the world on intimate, non-verbal expressions of affection or “missing” [22], and notebook-size computers.” This conjoining of intimate computationally enhanced objects, like beds, that offer “a computers and ubiquitous computing within an issue of shared virtual space for bridging the distance between two Scientific American dedicated to Communications, remotely located individuals through aural, visual, and Computers and Networks is perhaps not a coincidence – tactile manifestations of subtle emotional qualities.” [5]. both represents complementary parts of a future vision. These computationally enhanced objects are all the more How has this conjunction been expressed more recently? effective because they themselves are rich (culturally Broadly, there are 3 manifestations in the (predominantly) specific) signifiers. Dodge states of the bed, it is “very technology literature. 1. intimacy as cognitive and "loaded" with meaning, as we have strong emotional emotional closeness with technology, where the technology associations towards such intimate and personal (typically unidirectionally) may be aware of, and experiences”[5]. responsive to, our intentions, actions and feelings. Here our INTIMATE COMPUTING TODAY AND TOMORROW technologies know us intimately; we may or may not know So where are we to go with intimate computing in the age them intimately. 2. intimacy as physical closeness with of ubiquitous and proactive computing and the tentative technology, both on the body and/or within the body. 3. realities of pervasive computing [23]? Clearly, as we move intimacy through technology: technology that can express to the possibility of computing beyond the desktop and of our intentions, actions and feelings toward others. home office, to wireless hubs and hotspots, and from fixed In the first category, Lamming and Flynn at Rank Xerox devices to a stunning array of mobile and miniature form Research Center in the UK in the mid-1990s invoked factors, the need to account for the diversities of people’s ‘intimate computing’ as a broader paradigm within which embodied, daily life starts to impose itself into the debate. to situate their ‘forget-me-not’ memory aid. They wrote,