Ubiquitous Computing, what is it about? The story of Jess…

Jess wakes up to Alexa who informs her of what the weather is going to be like and her schedule for the day and then tunes in to her favorite playlist of music.

Jess puts on her outfit for the day, ‘which also has a pair of Augmented reality smart glasses’ the clothing immediately reports health information to her smart device and reminds her of her workout schedule and other information.

Her outfit adjusts itself automatically based on the weather conditions creating warmth if its cold or cooling if its hot outside, if anything unusual is detected in Jess’s health the outfit sends a notification automatically via a telemedicine application to Jess’s doctor and prompts Jess to get a checkup or visit the drug store to get the appropriate remedy.

As Jess preps her breakfast her smart fridge informs her of what is available, and reminds her she needs to pickup some vegetables on her way home from work. The fridge signals her AR glasses with the reminder, upon the reminder Jess simply presses a button or voices a command and a list is sent automatically to her local grocer who processes the transaction and sends a collection or delivery time via email which Jess can easily read via her smart glasses.

Jess asks Alexa to call an Uber to work which she pays for using crypto currency, 20 minutes later an autonomous electric car appears guided by LIDAR.

The car tunes Jess’s favorite music (as it was playing in her home) and adjusts the comfort settings to cater to her needs automatically, the car works out the most optimal route to get her to work also.

As she begins to travel her smart glasses sync with the cars visual display allowing her to begin work even before reaching the office, but rather than working from a laptop or tablet she simply has an Augmented Reality ‘holographic display’ that appears on the cars dashboard area allowing her to easily navigate with minor eye movements or basic haptic controllers.

Her data is delivered at high speeds over 5G, and being received from a cloud based, blockchain secured service to Jess’s AR User Interface inside the car as she is commuting to work.

Jess dictates her emails where the device via Voice First automatically prepares them into a template and then she simply instructs it to be sent out.

By the time Jess gets to work she has already cleared through most of her important emails for the morning, as she steps out of the self driving Uber, and passes the Starbucks on the way to her office a request pops up on her AR glasses about whether she wants her usual Latte delivered when she arrives at work, with a blink she accepts the request, and as she walks through her office her latte is waiting for her at the reception entrance.

As she approaches reception to grab her latte, a holographic assistant pops up and asks if there is anything else Jess needs, and a number of scheduled meetings appear on Jess’s glasses with reminders of what time she has to attend them and what she needs to present.

One of the meetings is with a manager in the London Office and a client in Singapore, so Jess in her New York office puts on a VR headset and connects with the two others to discuss the project in a VR meeting room.

When Jess decides its time to go home after a busy day as she walks along a path with stores Jess has an interest in, they send relevant advertising offers to her AR glasses as she passes them to reach the station where she catches a high speed maglev train home.

In this entire scenario there are no cellphones or even laptop or desktop computers in sight. Jess’s world is augmented by information and communication in a natural way, everything she uses in her daily life is connected holistically, she can function remotely controlling all her experiences easily.

How far are we from this reality? Pundits of immersive technology say that by 2025 this may be the norm. While I personally am skeptical that the world could transform to this level that quickly, it has been less than a decade where mobile technology has changed the lives of over 3 billion people around the world and defined how we communicate. I think certainly within a decade, Jess’s lifestyle will be more than achievable.

And while there is much hype about VR, AR, XR, MR, AI, Voice First, Cloud, Crypto, Blockchain and 5G one has to take into account that around 15 to 20 years ago these industries let alone the professionals working within them did not really exist. Back then there was only what I would best describe as enthusiasts with a fascination for building the tomorrow.

Personally it feels like something out of sci-fi, Jess is a fictional character I made for this article to try and demonstrate ubiquitous computing without making it complicated for the average person to understand.