Atoms in Places: Consider the fundamental problem of how to associate useful information with a place.
An everyday solution to this problem is to put up a sign. Signs provide useful
information about places, and can be found wherever people go: names of streets,
billboards along highways, addresses on buildings, directories in buildings, and numbers
on doors. Beyond simple signs there are more complex ways of providing messages
in places: notes posted on bulletin boards, instructions placed on machinery, menus
outside restaurants, exhibit information at museums, audio messages on subways, and TV monitors
in airports. Going one step beyond non-interactive signs and messages, people can
get information associated with a place using computer kiosks, courtesy telephones,
and of course real people at information desks. Access to the information associated
with a place supports intelligent, efficient, coordinated human behavior. It may
sound over blown, but civilization as we know it would not be possible without the
humble sign! Signs, along with wrist watches and thousands of other everyday things, augment
reality to make us smart [4]. And yet, we all value the time and places when we
can shed our technological and cultural "artifact skin." Getting away from it all
is an important design point.
To support and coordinate diverse activities we often need to associate information
with places. Interestingly, humans are not the only creatures that do this. Nearly
all species of ants rely on leaving molecular messages at places to coordinate activities such as gathering food, clearing waste, building structures, and defending the
colony. Configurations of atoms (physical stuff) is one way to place useful information
where it's needed.
Atoms on People in Places: Of course, associating useful information with a place does not necessarily require
permanently placing signs, messages, people, kiosks, or telephones at locations.
For many activities, people can simply remember the information they will need at
a place or bring along the information in the form of guide books, instruction manuals, crib
sheets, or even other people (colleagues, tour guides). Furthermore, given the availability
of radios, cellular telephones, mobile computing devices, and wireless access to the World Wide Web, we now possess an even wider array of technological gadgets
to serve up useful information at a place. These latter techniques exploit portable
devices and do not require permanently placing atoms (physical stuff) at the places
of interest. Nevertheless, because portable devices are used in many different places
to access a great variety of information, people must search for the relevant information
associated with the place of interest.
Atoms with Location Sense on People in Places: Given a mobile computing device with "location sense," it is sometimes possible to
overcome the problem of manually searching for useful information associated with
places. The term "location sense" was coined by Rao Machiraju to refer to a capability
of a device that can ascertain its location. A device with location sense can automatically
bring up information about its location. These devices often incorporate GPS (Global
Positioning System) and/or INS (Inertial Navigation System) components to determine their locations. Alternative positioning techniques include: triangulation
based on dead reckoning to known locations on a map, tracking stations that provide
telemetry data, and beacons (physical stuff) placed near all locations of interest.
The Illusion of Bits in Places: Given wearable personal video systems with location sense wirelessly communicating
with servers that index information by location, it becomes possible to create the
illusion of bits in places. This particular integration of technologies is inevitable,
and done on a planetary scale creates a WorldBoard SPECIES. The inevitability of
this integration is most apparent when shopping at Fry's. Three separate aisles
contain the wireless devices (cellular phones), positioning devices (car navigation,
and hiker navigation), and personal viewing devices (video game glasses, and personal video
displays). Each separate technology is generating increased competition, taking
up more shelf space, as prices plummet. Their integration is inevitable, and the
result will be a new SPECIES - a planetary augmented reality system referred to in this paper
as WorldBoard. If the illusion of bits in places is "good enough," then our notion
of place changes and we begin to think about not just atoms in places, but bits in
places.