title: Invisible computing: automatically using the many bits of data we create.
abstract: As we go about our work and our daily lives, we leave a trail of bits behind. Every electronic device we interact with can keep a record of our actions. Even the devices themselves can keep track of their location and radio interactions, even without user involvement. The challenge of invisible computing is to make this wealth of data useful. This paper presents two examples of what has come to be known as 'invisible computing', namely, devices recording, distilling and rendering these many bits of data without unduly taxing human users. The first example is focused on a work environment. Labscape automates the record keeping required of experimenters in a cell biology laboratory. The second example looks at more ad hoc interactions. RFID Ecosystem is a collection of radio-frequency identification (RFID) readers and databases that collect the sightings of passive RFID tags, attached to people and objects, as they move throughout a large building. It provides services such as people and object finding as well as diary keeping.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98115, USA. gaetano@cs.washington.edu
authors.forename: Gaetano
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Borriello
mesh_terms: D001695:Biology / Q000639:trends*; D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000639:trends*; D008838:Microcomputers / Q000639:trends*; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface