Situating Ubiquitous Computing in Everyday Life: Bridging the Social and Technical Divide

Despite the appeal of Weiser's vision for the computer in the 21 st century there is, at this current moment in time, a great divide between technical developments and their resonance with the everyday settings in which they might be deployed. We believe that working out the significance of the social is a central problematic for ubiquitous computing if the divide is to be bridged. However, weaving technical developments into everyday settings ultimately depends on working out what the 'social' consists of and what it means for Ubicomp. As a first measure in what has to be a long-term consideration of these issues we invite participation from interdisciplinary researchers who have experience in the field. The goal of this workshop is to enable themes of generic purchase to the developers of UbiComp systems to be initially identified and articulated. SITUATING UBICOMP