The familiar and useful come from things we recognize. Many of our
favorite things' appearance communicate their use; they show the change in
their value though patina. As technologists we are now poised to imagine a
world where computing objects communicate with us in-situ; where we are. We
use our looks, feelings, and actions to give the computer the experience it
needs to work with us.
Keyboards and mice will not continue to dominate computer user interfaces.
Keyboard input will be replaced in large measure by systems that know what
we want and require less explicit communication. Sensors are gaining
fidelity and ubiquity to record presence and actions; sensors will notice
when we enter a space, sit down, lie down, pump iron, etc. Pervasive
infrastructure is recording it.
This talk will cover projects from the Context Aware Computing Group at MIT
Media Lab.
Bio
Dr. Ted Selker is an Associate Professor at the MIT Media and Arts
Technology Laboratory, and the Director of the Context Aware Computing Lab
(www.media.mit.edu/context). Prior to joining MIT faculty in November 1999,
Ted worked at the IBM Almaden Research Center, where he became IBM Fellow
in 1996 (www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/selker). He has served as a
consulting professor at Stanford University, taught at Hampshire,
University of Massachussets at Amherst and Brown Universities and worked at
Xerox PARC and Atari Research Labs.
Ted's research has borne fruit in several product lines and has contributed
to hundreds of products ranging from notebook computers to operating
systems. His work takes the form of several prototype concept products a
year supported by cognitive science research. He is known for the design of
the "TrackPoint III" in-keyboard pointing device now found in Compaq,
Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Sony, TI, and other computers, for creating the "COACH"
adaptive agent that improves user performance (Warp Guides in OS/2), and
for the design of the 755CV notebook computer that doubles as an LCD
projector.
Ted built the User Systems Ergonomics Research or USER at IBM. It is known
for creating dozens of product visualizations in the form of prototypes and
products yearly. USER is also known for creating dozens of patents,
refereed articles and for dozens of articles and other press which feature
its work every year. He created the now famous forum, New Paradigms for
Using Computers.
Ted and his inventions have received more than 30 awards from publications
like PC Magazine, Business Week, and BYTE. He is the author of 17 patents,
20 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings. Over 40 articles
in publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal,
Business Week, Investor's Business Daily, Wired, and London Times have been
written about Ted and his work.
