Communication-capable devices: the new telecommunications frontier?

摘要

Smart Devices are more than just a new generation of fancy gizmos for nomadic users. They embody a fundamental evolution of information technology, characterized by stronger interaction between the information/communication world and the physical environment. This evolution is made possible by the ubiquity of wireless MAN, LAN or PAN network access, and the availability of sensors/actuators that can be integrated in standard technologies. It opens up a new range of communication services made possible by the networking of regular (non-IT) devices, interacting with the environment by way of these sensors and actuators. New and richer human interfaces for classical communication services do also appear as a result. The end-point of this evolution would be the subjective disappearance of these devices, becoming transparent to the user. In this perspective, communication/information moves "out of the box(es)", pervades the environment, an environment attentive to the user's needs, proactively taking into account a rich set of context information (e.g. location) for these implicit and ubiquitous interactions to be possible.