Panel

September 2011 marks a historic date in the history of Ubicomp. It is exactly 20 years from when Dr. Mark Weiser’s historic article, “The Computer for the Twenty-First Century,” appeared in Scientific American. This article is acclaimed for widely publicizing the idea of Ubicomp in the research community and setting the goals for the early years of the field. We will mark this historic occasion with a special panel in tribute to the late Dr. Weiser. Our panel of luminaries, including those who worked with Dr. Weiser at Xerox PARC, as well as his contemporaries who were influenced by his work at the time, will reminisce on Mark’s predictions and well as present their view of where the field should move going forward.

Panel Chair, Elizabeth D. Mynatt

Elizabeth D. Mynatt is the Executive Director of the GT Institute for People and Technology, and Professor in the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research program Everyday Computing examines the human-computer interface implications of having computation continuously present in many aspects of everyday life.  Her research contributes to ongoing work in personal health informatics, computer-supported collaborative work and human-computer interface design.  Named Top Woman Innovator in Technology by Atlanta Woman Magazine in 2005, Mynatt has created new technologies that support the independence and quality of life of older adults "aging in place," that help people manage diabetes, and that increase creative collaboration in workplaces.

From 2005 - 2010, Mynatt directed the GVU Center at Georgia Tech.  This internationally recognized interdisciplinary research organization brings together over 70 faculty at Georgia Tech with the mission to "unlock human potential through technical innovation."  By working with a broad range of industry partners, GVU researchers engage difficult societal challenges and marketplace uncertainties with leadership and expertise in computing, engineering, design, science, art and the humanities. 

Mynatt is a member of the SIGCHI Academy, a Sloan and Kavli research fellow, and serves on Microsoft Research's Technical Advisory Board. Mynatt is also a member of the Computing Community Consortium, an NSF-sponsored effort to engage the computing research community in envisioning more audacious research challenges. She has published more than 100 scientific papers and chaired the CHI 2010 conference, the premier international conference in human-computer interaction. Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty in 1998, she was a member of the research staff at Xerox PARC, working with the founder of ubiquitous computing, Mark Weiser.

Panelists: John Seely Brown, Gregory Abowd, Paul Dourish, and Jun Rekimoto

John Seely Brown is the Independent Co-Chairman of the Deloitte’s Center for the Edge and a visiting scholar and advisor to the Provost at University of Southern California (USC).  Prior to that he was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)—a position he held for nearly two decades.  While head of PARC, Brown expanded the role of corporate research to include such topics as the management of radical innovation, organizational learning, complex adaptive systems, and nano technologies.  He was a cofounder of the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL).  His personal research interests include digital youth culture, digital media and institutional innovation.

 John, or as he is often called—JSB— is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and of AAAS and a Trustee of the MacArthur Foundation.  He serves on numerous public boards (Amazon, Corning, and Varian Medical Systems) and private boards of directors.  He has published over 100 papers in scientific journals. With Paul Duguid he co-authored the acclaimed book The Social Life of Information (HBS Press, 2000) that has been translated into 9 languages with a second addition in April 2002.  With John Hagel he co-authored the book The Only Sustainable Edge which is about new forms of collaborative innovation and The Power of Pull: how small moves, smartly made can set big things in motion, published April 2010.   His current book, The New Culture of Learning co-authored with Professor Doug Thomas at USC, was released January 2011.

Gregory Abowd is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech.  Since 1994, when he arrived at Georgia Tech and was influenced by Weiser's article, he has been exploring topics in ubiquitous computing, ranging from very technology-centered inventions to software infrastructure to applications in classrooms, the workplace and homes.  Gregory was the General Chair of UbiComp 2001, when the conference took on its current name and first appeared in North America. He is most proud of his advisement of a generation of Ubicomp researchers whose work and influence far surpasses his own work.

Paul Dourish is a Professor of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at UC Irvine, with courtesy appointments in Computer Science and Anthropology. His research focuses primarily on understanding information technology as a site of social and cultural production; his work combines topics in human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and science and technology studies. In 2008, he was elected to the CHI Academy in recognition of his contributions to Human-Computer Interaction. He is the author of "Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction" (MIT Press, 2001), which explores how phenomenological accounts of action can provide an alternative to traditional cognitive analysis for understanding the embodied experience of interactive and computational systems. With Genevieve Bell, he is the author of "Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing" (MIT Press, 2011), which examines the social and cultural aspects of the ubiquitous computing research program.

Before coming to UCI, he was a Senior Member of Research Staff in the Computer Science Laboratory of Xerox PARC; he has also held research positions at Apple Computer and at Rank Xerox EuroPARC. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University College, London, and a B.Sc. (Hons) in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh.

Jun Rekimoto received his B.A.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. in Information Science from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1984, 1986, and 1996, respectively. From 1986 to 1994, he worked for the Software Laboratory of NEC. During 1992-1993, he worked in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at the University of Alberta, Canada, as a visiting scientist. Since 1994 he has worked for Sony Computer Science Laboratories (Sony CSL). In 1999 he formed, and has since directed, the Interaction Laboratory within Sony CSL.

At Sony CSL, Rekimoto initiated and has led the "Real-World User Interfaces" project since 1994. This project produced several notable research accomplishments, including NaviCam (a situationally-aware mobile assistant), Pick-and-Drop (a direct-manipulation technique for inter-appliance computing), Multiple-Device Digital Whiteboard, Augmented Surfaces, and TimeScape (a time-machine user interface environment). Some of these are being commercialized in Sony's VAIO personal computer series.

Rekimoto's research interests include computer augmented environments, mobile/wearable computing, virtual reality, and information visualization. He has authored dozens of refereed publications in the area of human-computer interactions, including ACM, CHI, and UIST. One of his publications was recognized with the 30th commemorative papers award from the Information Processing Society Japan (IPSJ) in 1992. He also received the Multi-Media Grand Prix Technology Award from the Multi-Media Contents Association Japan in 1998, the Yamashita Memorial Research Award from IPSJ in 1999, and the Japan Inter-Design Award in 2003. In 2007, he was elected to ACM SIGCHI Academy.