I worked with Mark Weiser at the University of Maryland Heterogeneous Systems Lab, where we researched and published a paper about pie menus at CHI'88, before he went to run Xerox PARC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weiser

https://donhopkins.medium.com/an-empirical-comparison-of-pie...

The Computer for the 21st Century:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkHALBOqn7s

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28351064

DonHopkins on Aug 29, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: Computers should expose their internal workings as...

Natalie Jeremijenko: LiveWire, Dangling String; Mark Weiser: Calm Technology, Ubiquitous Computing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calm_technology

>Calm Technology

>History

>The phrase "calm technology" was first published in the article "Designing Calm Technology", written by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown in 1995.[1] The concept had developed amongst researchers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in addition to the concept of ubiquitous computing.[3]

>Weiser introduced the concept of calm technology by using the example of LiveWire or "Dangling String". It is an eight-foot (2.4 m) string connected to the mounted small electric motor in the ceiling. The motor is connected to a nearby Ethernet cable. When a bit of information flows through that Ethernet cable, it causes a twitch of the motor. The more the information flows, the motor runs faster, thus creating the string to dangle or whirl depending on how much network traffic is. It has aesthetic appeal; it provides a visualization of network traffic but without being obtrusive.[4]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190508225438/https://www.karls...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20131214054651/http://ieeexplore...

PDF: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~./jasonh/courses/ubicomp-sp2007/paper...

[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20110706212255/https://uwspace.u...

PDF: https://web.archive.org/web/20170810073340/https://uwspace.u...

>According to Weiser, LiveWire is primarily an aesthetic object, a work of art, which secondarily allows the user to know network traffic, while expending minimal effort. It assists the user by augmenting an office with information about network traffic. Essentially, it moves traffic information from a computer screen to the ‘real world’, where the user can acquire information from it without looking directly at it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Jeremijenko#Live_Wire_...

>Natalie Jeremijenko

>Live Wire (Dangling String), 1995

>In 1995,[9] as an artist-in-residence at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, California under the guidance of Mark Weiser, she created an art installation made up of LED cables that lit up relative to the amount of internet traffic. The work is now seen as one of the first examples of ambient or "calm" technology.[10][11]

[9] https://web.archive.org/web/20110526023949/http://mediaartis...

[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20100701035651/http://iu.berkele...

>Weiser comments on Dangling String: "Created by artist Natalie Jeremijenko, the "Dangling String" is an 8 foot piece of plastic spaghetti that hangs from a small electric motor mounted in the ceiling. The motor is electrically connected to a nearby Ethernet cable, so that each bit of information that goes past causes a tiny twitch of the motor. A very busy network causes a madly whirling string with a characteristic noise; a quiet network causes only a small twitch every few seconds. Placed in an unused corner of a hallway, the long string is visible and audible from many offices without being obtrusive."

[11] https://web.archive.org/web/20120313074738/http://ipv6.com/a...

>Mark Weiser suggested the idea of enormous number of ubiquitous computers embedding into everything in our everyday life so that we use them anytime, anywhere without the knowledge of them. Today, ubiquitous computing is still at an early phase as it requires revolutionary software and hardware technologies.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17353666

DonHopkins on June 20, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans (...

Mark Weiser once told me that Ubik was one of his inspirations for Ubiquitous Computing.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060220211305/http://www.ubiq.c...

>Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.

https://blog.canary.is/from-tesla-to-touchscreens-the-journe...

>One year earlier, in 1998, Mark Weiser described it a little differently, stating that, “Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world,” Weiser asserted,“ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people.” This wasn’t the first time someone broached the idea of IoT. In the early 1980s, students at Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science department created the first IoT Coke machine. Author Philip K. Dick wrote about the smart home in the 1969 sci-fi novel Ubik, and four decades before, inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla addressed the concept in Colliers Magazine. In an amazingly prescient 1926 interview, Tesla said,

>"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain…We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance…and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik

“Five cents, please,” his front door said when he tried to open it. One thing, anyhow, hadn’t changed. The toll door had an innate stubbornness to it; probably it would hold out after everything else. After everything except it had long since reverted, perhaps in the whole city … if not the whole world.

He paid the door a nickel, hurried down the hall to the moving ramp which he had used only minutes ago.

[…]

“I don’t have any more nickels,” G. G. said. “I can’t get out.”

Glancing at Joe, then at G. G., Pat said, “Have one of mine.” She tossed G. G. a coin, which he caught, an expression of bewilderment on his face. The bewilderment then, by degrees, changed to aggrieved sullenness.

“You sure shot me down,” he said as he deposited the nickel in the door’s slot. “Both of you,” he muttered as the door closed after him. “I discovered her. This is really a cutthroat business, when —“ His voice faded out as the door clamped shut. There was, then, silence.

[…]

“I’ll go get my test equipment from the car,” Joe said, starting towards the door.

“Five cents, please,”

“Pay the door,” Hoe said to G. G. Ashwood.

[...]

“Can I borrow a couple of poscreds from you?” Joe said. “So I can eat breakfast?”

“Mr. Hammond warned me that you would try to borrow money from me. He informed me that he already provided you with sufficient funds to pay for your hotel room, plus a round of drinks, as well as —“

“Al based his estimate on the assumption that I would rent a more modest room than this."