Invisible Yet Necessary

There has been a lot of talk about the state and the future of broadband Internet lately. Since I am looking into the design of ubiquitous systems for my research and the legal perspective, I looked at the concept of network neutrality and its possible impact on wireless network infrastructure design. This year, the US Congress will probably enact legislation about network neutrality that could change the way Internet is, and not just in the US. Because of that, there has been a lot of activity and discussion about what network neutrality should be and how it should be protected.
But first, what is network neutrality?

[Network neutrality] suggests that (1) to maximize human welfare, information networks ought be as neutral as possible between various uses or applications, and (2) if necessary, government ought to intervene to promote or preserve the neutrality of the network. (Wikipedia)

Network neutrality basically means that whatever content you want to transmit over the network, this content will be treated in the same way as any other content by the network infrastructure. The Internet was built on a the principle of best effort delivery, which means it can guarantee you that it will deliver your content but it will do its best.

Best-effort delivery describes a network service in which the network does not provide any special features that recover lost or corrupted packets. These services are instead provided by end systems (Linktionary)

The 2 concepts of network neutrality and best efforts are usually associated to a third concept: common carrier.

A common carrier is an organization that transports a product or service using its facilities, or those of other carriers, and offers its services to the general public. (Wikipedia)

The best example of common carrier are post offices. A post office usually pick up and deliver letters and packages regardless of their content (unless the content is deemed dangerous to transport).

When Internet took off, telephone companies were considered common carriers and will transport the traffic from and to their clients to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) that the client has chosen.

When dial-up was still prevalent:

1. The phone companies like BellSouth, Qwest or Verizon would provide the phone line (the “pipes”)
2. ISP like Earthlink or AOL will provide the Internet service on top of the phone line.

But with broadband technologies like DSL, phone companies could better control both the pipes and the service .

And this is where the problem lies.

(more…)

A workshop at CHI 2006 in Montreal that matches my research topics. Submission deadline of position papers has been extended to Jan 16th.

IT@Home: Unraveling Complexities of Networked Devices in the Home
CHI 2006 Workshop

Call for Participation

The home is becoming a complex and hard to manage collection of
computers and digital lifestyle devices. The work to setup and
maintain a network of digital living devices in the home is similar
to the work of IT professionals. Indeed the growing complexity of
interconnected digital devices results in more and more time spent
solving problems with those devices and their configurations, an
important part of computer use that we call “IT@Home”. The workshop
will be structured to consider four areas of focus:

• Perspectives – How should we consider IT@Home? What theories
  apply to IT@Home?
• Problem Framing – What are critical problems in IT@Home?
• Empirical Study – Case studies and examples of effectively
  studying home IT.
• Design – What are some critical design issues for IT@Home?

Contributions to these conceptual areas that are illustrated through
data and case studies will be valued by researchers, designers,
product teams and market analysts through the coming years.

Individuals interested in participating in this full-day workshop
should submit a position paper on IT@Home that addresses one of the
four areas listed above. Position papers should be limited to 4
pages. Submissions in PDF or Word should be sent to David McDonald
dwmc at u.washington.edu by Monday, January 16, 2006. Notifications of
acceptance to the workshop will be made in early February 2006.

For more information on the workshop please visit:
IT@Home: Unraveling Complexities of Networked Devices in the Home
CHI 2006 Workshop

Today is World Usability Day. So we should think harder today (and every other day too) on how we can make things, systems, services … more useful and enjoyable to use.
For my part, I am:

• researching on how to make wireless networking more easy and natural to use
• searching and accessing information more efficient (especially multimedia)

What are you doing?

Sunday’s story in the New York Times Meet the Life Hackers talks about interruption in the workplace and how information technology tools are now fighting for our attention.

Information is no longer a scarce resource - attention is. David Rose, a Cambridge, Mass.-based expert on computer interfaces, likes to point out that 20 years ago, an office worker had only two types of communication technology: a phone, which required an instant answer, and postal mail, which took days. “Now we have dozens of possibilities between those poles,” Rose says. How fast are you supposed to reply to an e-mail message? Or an instant message? Computer-based interruptions fall into a sort of Heisenbergian uncertainty trap: it is difficult to know whether an e-mail message is worth interrupting your work for unless you open and read it - at which point you have, of course, interrupted yourself. Our software tools were essentially designed to compete with one another for our attention, like needy toddlers.

It talks particularly of the issues surroundings notification systems and ambient displays, that I have planned to include in my design.
It features research from Victor M. Gonzalez and Gloria Mark who presented their work at ECSCW in Paris. Mary Czerwinski, a Microsoft researcher, also worked on the subject to help the NASA with managing interruptions on astronauts conducting experiment.

She also collaborated with the HIP group at Microsoft Research that presented on Thursday at Oregon State Univ for a colloquim I had to attend for my Human Computer Interaction class. While their presentation was aimed at helping programmers with learning how to deal with large amounts of code and come to speed quickly on office practice, it could as well been re-used in other environments like general information workers.

The Yellow chair stories presented at Ubicomp related the interaction between people passing by and a wireless network connectivity materialized by a yellow chair placed in front of a house in london, UK.

For more details, see the Yellow Chair Stories - a live service design intervention and watch the Yellow Chair Stories video

See also:
Ubicomp 2005 demo: u-texture
Ubicomp 2005, Tokyo