Institute For The Future

Thinking About Context

We're beginning to gather a considerable body of research contributions from IFTF Technology Horizons workshops and interviews with experts investigating context awareness. Meanwhile, we've also been reading some great works by other leaders in the field. We'll try to introduce a few of these here, for your review, if you are interested in pre-reading for the upcoming Tech Horizons conference in October.

 

Paul Dourish Associate Professor Interactive and Collaborative Technologies (ICT), University of California, Irvine is easy to recommend. Although quite a few people have written about "Context" one of Paul Dourish's papers stands out: "What we think about when we think about Context" is a clearly written and deeply reasoned explanation of Context as a science and design framework for "computational systems that can sense and respond to aspects of the settings in which they are used ... allowing users to negotiate and evolve systems of practice and meaning in the course of their interaction with information systems"

 

There's superb bibliography too, of pointers to other important related research on context aware computing. Paul Dourish is a great entry point. Here's an abstract and link to the paper. Check it out:

"What we think about when we think about Context" [pdf - 18pgs.]

"Traditionally, human-computer interaction has taken place within a constrained and well-understood domain of experience – single users sitting at desks and interacting with conventionally-designed computers employing screens, keyboards and mice for interaction. New opportunities have engendered considerable interest in