Changing Places: Contexts of Awareness in Computing

TLDR

Wireless information services enable any social institution to structure activity in any place, breaking the traditional mapping between institutions and places, complicating context analysis for designing context‑aware computing systems, and underscoring that context is both physical and institutionally defined. The essay develops two conceptual frameworks for analyzing context in mobile and ubiquitous computing. The first framework examines the relationship between architecture, practices, and institutions, focusing on the middle ground where information services use whatever computational resources are in the user’s surroundings, while the second, the capture model, reconstructs traditional systems analysis methods to reorganize work activities so a computer can capture the needed information. Context‑aware computing devices that depart from the capture model face a difficult set of design tradeoffs.

Abstract

Abstract By allowing any social institution to structure activity in any place, wireless information services break down the traditional mapping between institutions and places. This phenomenon greatly complicates the analysis of context for purposes of designing context-aware computing systems. Context has a physical aspect, but most aspects of context will also be defined in institutional terms. This essay develops two conceptual frameworks for the analysis of context in mobile and ubiquitous computing. The first framework concerns the relation between architecture, practices, and institutions; it directs attention to the complex middle ground in which information services make use of whatever computational resources happen to be in the user's physical surroundings. The second framework is called the capture model; it rationally reconstructs the traditional systems analysis methods, which reorganize work activities to enable a computer to capture the information it needs. Context-aware computing devices that depart from the capture model face a difficult set of design tradeoffs.