Guest Speaker: Leonardo Bonanni

I really enjoyed Leonardo Bonanni's presentation on ubiquitous computing and the MIT Media Lab. He gave an insight to new technology that I'd never really thought of before.
The concept of ubiquitous computing itself - computers being everywhere, in all aspects of life and interaction - was incredibly interesting. When Bonanni first started talking about this concept, I almost felt as if he was talking about old technology. When he mentioned "your pen being a computer" it seemed like he was talking about regression - this has already been done before. I think a commonly held view of the future is that everything will be digital, holographic, intangible - it seems a natural progression at this point. That's what it was hard to grasp exactly what Bonanni was talking about here - a future of tangible technology. An actual book, that you would hold in your hand, with pages, but what you see on those pages is computer based. This was computing technology in a way that had never occurred to me before.
When you live in a world where, for many, the most important thing they own is their computer, it is hard to imagine the computer itself disappearing and filtering itself into all aspects around you. Even with mobile computing - which Bonanni listed as the step before ubiquitous computing - you are carrying a computer around with you, holding it in your hand, even if it is very small.
In addition to the tangible interfaces of ubiquitous computing discussed - pens, brushes, desks, books, etc. - other methods, including ambient displays and augmented reality were brought up. As I mentioned before, these ideas are revolutionary, albeit hard to get used to - when you're used to checking one object (your computer) for everything, having the information you'd be looking for present to you at all times throughout the room you're sitting in is a hard concept to grasp at this point in time. Knowing your stocks are up because the glowing orb on your desk turns green is certainly more convenient than having to grab your laptop or pull your iPhone out of your pocket to look them up - but is it what you want?
With the computer isolated as one object, there is an element of being able to be disconnected if you so choose - putting it away for a few hours. With ubiquitous computing this option may never be there, unless you wish you put away your desk and pens and everything else in the room around you away too.