Context aware computing and futurism at Intel — Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium

At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco in September last year, Justin Rattner, the director of Intel Labs, announced a new research division, called Interaction and Experience Research (IXR) and headed by Genevieve Bell, and also presented a new vision of context-aware computers and mobile devices.

Now the Intel website provides some more background on Intel’s work on Context Aware Computing.

“Context-awareness can make computing devices more responsive to individual needs and help to intelligently personalize apps and services. Using self-learning mechanisms, sensor inputs, and data analytics, Intel research teams are engaged in a number of projects that promise to take machine learning beyond the lab to practical, real-world applications.”

Most interestingly, the site goes into some depth on Intel’s current projects that explore the boundaries of context-aware computing:

Online Semi-Supervised Learning and Face Recognition: Use face recognition in place of a password to log in to any protected site. The self-learning techniques being refined by this project can be adapted to many areas of context awareness.
Context Aware Computing—Activity Recognition: This project is developing techniques so that your computer can adapt to your patterns of activity and, based on your needs and expectations, instruct and guide you on a daily basis.
Context-Aware Computer—Social Proximity Detection: Your friends, family, and co-workers all play a role in determining how your daily activities unfold. This project identifies ways to use the proximity of people important in your life to adjust communications and to help coordinate activities.

There is also more information on Intel’s Tomorrow Project & Futurism initiative.

“The project features science fiction stories, comics and short screen plays based on current research and emerging technologies and examines their affect on our future. “

Check the stories by Douglas Rushkoff, Ray Hammond. Scarlett Thomas and Markus Heitz. The next one is by Cory Doctorow, it seems.