A few weeks ago Intel CTO Justin Rattner gave a keynote speech on Intel’s vision for context-awareness. The opening video is a little cheesy, but it shows just how important a problem the notion of context has become to technology (and the companies most involved in it’s creation). Most of the examples shown are around intelligent recommendations – mobile phones that pick’n’mix information from various applications running inside them. Scenarios show applications making food and sightseeing suggestions, and reminding you to bring an umbrella because it might rain soon.
The one that struck me the most was a remote control that built user profiles from the way you press it’s buttons.
Still, I find this vision lacking something. It’s all about what can be computationally sensed. What about context – as much of it is – that is created dynamically, fleetingly, and between people?
The video is worth a watch: