Dude, where is my computer?

You know how you sometimes read an article somewhere and you think this is so cool, I should write a blog entry about this as well? Well, I do!

I was just reading an article on cloud computing in IEEE Spectrum (by the way, an excellent magazine for technology lovers). This article, titled the cloud is the computer, discusses how Paul McFedries (the author) expects cloud computing to power the future of pervasive (or ubiquitous) computing. This makes two of us! (Well, most likely more.)

Being a researcher in pervasive computing technologies, and an active user of several cloud computing-based applications myself, has affected my thinking of how the future of computing could be. The original idea behind ubiquitous computing, as expressed by Mark Weiser, is for technologies that result to computing receding to the background of our lives. In other words, the users continue receiving the benefit of using their favorite services without necessarily having to bother about the actual machinery that offers them.

If you think about it, when you connect to GMail from your desktop's favorite browser, you do not bother about the complex machinery that is required to enable that. You rather concentrate on your goal, which in this case is textual communication. Later on in the day, when you access your account using GMail for mobile on your smart-phone, you still have access to similar functionality, which (ideally) is adapted to your context. For instance, a smaller screen, lower bandwidth and a more constrained keyboard.

Personally, I think that GMail is currently the most successful, and definitely the most widespread, example of a pervasive computing application. Although we are still not at the point where the service is experienced with absolute transparency of the machinery, still this is the best example of how truly useful pervasive computing will be.