Cleve Gibbon

Ubiquitous Computing is the era of computing where many devices share you. Phones, tablets, watches, laptops, desktops, cameras, heart rate monitors, cars, homes, baby monitors, alarm systems, and so on are your devices. ubiquitous computing is about managing your increasing personal ecosystem of devices to best serve you.

Background

There have been four major eras of computing that have led us to ubiquitous computing (UC) today.  Each wave marks a significant shift in how we use computers.  

Era	Interaction Model
Mainframe	Many people share a single computer
Personal	One computer for every person
Internet	Many computers shared by many people
Ubiquitous	Many computers shares every person

The Eras of Computing

During the mainframe era, experts built computers for experts. Mainframe were expensive shared resources the size of houses, and accessible by the few.  

In the early 80s, Microsoft, IBM and Apple led the way in the personal computing era. And so computers got cheaper and smaller. Expertise spread to the person on the street. Personal computing put computers into the home. Then in 1984, the number of people using personal computers surpassed those sharing on mainframes. 

Personal computing laid the foundation for the internet era. The internet connected multiple business computers at work to multiple personal computers at home. The network was the computer.

The era of ubiquitous computing leverages all prior eras. Powerful mainframes, personal computers, and a mature network. However, today we have a highly connected network in which we can deploy many powerful devices for our personal use. Many devices sharing a piece of us.  Ubiquitous computing is like having your own personal, secure internet.

We couldn’t do this before. However, advances in 5G, cloud and edge computing over 4G are about to unlock massive upgrades into your personal internet that are:

• 100 times faster
• 100 times more connected devices
• 1000 times more bandwidth

The era of ubiquitous computing has arrived.