Enabling Chaotic Ubiquitous Computing1

Today, ubiquitous computing is possible only in handcrafted environments, and not across administrative and technological domains. For this to happen, a middleware "ecology" will need to emerge, so that users can exploit a chaotic environment of competing communication and service providers, and overlapping administrative authorities. Although key elements of the ecology exist today, simple exploitation of unfamiliar (or familiar) ubiquitous environments remains a challenge for users. They need simple tools that open the way to this increasingly rich ecology of devices, services, and information. This paper describes how such tools can be provided through a software abstraction called a frame.