Scenario

Bob's home entertainment system softens the volume of his custom music file as his phone rings. Alice begins telling Bob about the camera, and forwards him a copy of the advertisement which pops up on his home display. Bob is sold on the product, and after hanging up with her, he asks his electronic shopping agent to check his favorite photography stores for the lowest price and make the purchase.

When the camera arrives, Bob snaps some photos of his neighbor's collection of antique Portuguese navigation instruments. After reviewing the photo album generated automatically by a web-based service, Bob directs a copy of his favorite image to the art display in his foyer. He also sends a pointer to the photo album to Alice and instructs his scheduling agent to set up a lunch date so that he can thank her for the suggestion.

Research Issues

• User Interfaces: New modes of interaction such as user movement, proximity of devices, and embodied information presentation will augment the keyboard, pen, audio, and video interfaces we see today. The challenge is maintaining task-oriented consistency across physical devices while managing the multiple interfaces in a coherent manner. Also, the focus must shift to user intent and expectation and away from the execution of explicit commands. Data gathered from a variety of location sensors, identification tags, and on-line services, will augment or replace many user directives common today.
• Infrastructure: The networking fabric must provide robust data transfer with replication and discovery as well as the ability to marshal computing resources at internal network nodes. Users must be able to count on their data arriving where it needs to go without their direct intervention. The network must be data-centric in that transmission, routing, authentication, and resource reservation should be handled independently of the location of the user who injected the data. Intermittent wireless connectivity and transmission cost optimizations are examples of decisions for which the user should simply provide guidance once rather than for each use.
• Distributed Services: Rather than abstract capabilities, emphasis must be placed on applications to which users can easily relate. Different user interfaces and agent technologies, appropriate to their contexts, should be able to reach the same services. For example, a scheduling service may span several pieces of network infrastructure yet should be available via home display, PDA, auto PC, and a phone with voice recognition and synthesis. To facilitate service deployment and consumer choice, these services must be more openly organized into horizontal layers rather than the vertically integrated monolithic services of today.