[ISD Seminar] Ubiquitous Computing Considered Harmful: A Two-Act Story of Getting Things Right for the Wrong Reason
Prof. Gregory D. Abowd has been speaking and writing about the idea of an Internet of Materials for nearly a decade. It started as a way to rethink Mark Weiser's vision of ubiquitous computing in a more modern context, with the same hopeful zeal that Weiser presented in his writings from the late 1980s and early 1990's. He will summarize how that re-interpretation has inspired my work, and the work of a growing community, for nearly a decade. From those involved in the fundamental understanding of computation to those involved in the practical development and deployment of computation, the future seems bright. We are moving towards a world of increased ubiquity of computation. There appears to be no end in sight for the increased ubiquity of all things computational. From a technical perspective, this is wonderful. More recently, he have been forced to think about this vision through a different lens. When you reflect on the environmental impact of computation, and specifically the impact of how we manufacture, operate, and discard computational artifacts, there is an even more compelling reason to pursue the agenda of the Internet of Materials. This unending proliferation of computation is dangerous to the health of our planet. We MUST begin questioning a lot of the assumptions on how to make, operate, and dispose of computational objects. This is no longer a journey for the "visionaries" to play out their fanciful predictions for the future. It is a mandate to address the fundamental hazards of our current trajectory towards ubiquitous computing.
Prof. Gregory D. Abowd is Dean of the College of Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University. Prior to joining Northeastern in March 2021, he was on the faculty in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology for 26.5 years. In more than 26 years at Georgia Tech, Dr. Abowd initiated bold and innovative research efforts, such as Classroom 2000 and the Aware Home, as well as pioneering innovations in autism and technology, health systems, and a joint initiative with engineering in computational materials. He was on the founding editorial board of IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine, and was founding Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in HCI and The Proceedings of the ACM in Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT). He also founded the non-profit Atlanta Autism Consortium in 2008 to serve and unite the various stakeholder communities in Atlanta connected to autism research and services. Dean Abowd’s contributions to the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Ubiquitous Computing have been recognized through numerous awards from ACM and ACM SIGCHI, including the 2023 Lifetime Research Award. He has graduated 39 Ph.D. students, the majority of whom have gone on to successful careers at top universities around the world. Dr. Abowd received the degree of B.S. in Honors Mathematics in 1986 from the University of Notre Dame. He then attended the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom on a Rhodes Scholarship, earning the degrees of M.Sc. (1987) and D.Phil. (1991) in Computation.
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