You wake up and turn on the light.Go to the bathroom and turn on the tap.Having breakfast, strips of WiFi to read the latest news or check your social networks.However, you have not thought about the electric network , the pipes that bring water to your home or the innovations in telecommunications that allow you to have coverage.Each of them is a ubiquitous technology and, as such, is everywhere.
The ubiquitous technologies are not only those that in the future will allow us to have Internet without devices with a screen.They are already around us, hidden and we use them daily.But it takes a different time for each technology to reach invisibility.We explain what ubiquitous technology is .
What is that about ubiquitous technology?
Mark Weiser was the first to mention the concept of the ubiquitous technology, ubiquitous technology , in his article The Computer for the 21st Century for Scientific American in 1991.The article started like this:
"The technologies of greater depth are those that disappear.They are intertwined in the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from this"
Decades before, and much better known, is the phrase of Arthur C.Clarke:
«Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic»
No, the concept of ubiquity does not refer to dragons and fairies, although to magic spells, as well as to the fact that the technology disappears from our sight to provide a service that we do not have Why understand to make it work.
How many understand the complex electrical system or how does the water from the river reach the tap of our house? And yet, these tools work when we need them, remaining hidden until then on the walls, under the floor or in the guts of the city.
Spinning the ubiquitous technology with the magic spells that Arthur C.Clarke foresaw, today we can request by voice a conference with a person on the other side of the world, ¡ and we can even see it on a glass sheet in the palm of our hand ! Using the spell "Call..." our mobile phone puts us in line with that person.This, what we now call technology, in 1973 was nothing but magic.
Benson Hougland, in his 2014 TEDxTemecula (CE) talk, talked about the fact that today state-of-the-art technology is face-to-face .Smartphones and computers are visible screens that, even off, remain occupying space in our Little by little, says Hougland, computing will go to a plane where it will become invisible but will continue to function, as has already happened with other services in the past.
In the future, when we want to make a call, a screen will materialize in front of us from a wall or from a small rectangle in the air.Moreover, it may not be a rectangle, and the projection of the person with the that we speak will arise by our side as if she were really there.In a way, she will be, and the kilometers that separate us will lose meaning.
The four phases of Michio Kaku's technology: from exclusivity to ubiquity
As if the phases of a product were (introduction, growth, maturity and decline), Kaku has long proposed the four phases of technology: from the only the rich can possess it and it is in the mouth of everyone , everyone has access to and is invisible .
In a first phase, the technology is so valuable that virtually no one can access it .For example, the role in the China of the year 1000, or the papyrus in Ancient Egypt, was something so valuable that it was treated as a treasure.A current concept is the network of networks, a technology that travels almost the entire planet and that at the beginning of the Internet was only in the hands of a few.Another example is quantum computing, a technology avant-garde that is currently in this phase.It is so expensive that it is not marketable (yet).
In a second phase is marketing: technology can be sold to the general public , although its price is considerable.By 1450, when Gutenberg created a functional printing press, each person was able to own a Something similar happened with the car, radio or television, first as a family concept and then lowering the cost towards the personal.Today, one of the technologies that have just entered this phase is the possibility of implanting an extra sense in the skin.
The third phase appears when the technology depreciates considerably .In the case of paper: the folio cost falls below the penny in the first half of the 20th century.Suddenly, everyone could have as much paper as they would like, even more than it made sense to have.A few years ago, with the arrival of broadband to homes, data consumption accessed this phase.Mobile followed: in 2010 we were all worried about how many minutes of video amounted to 500 MB, but modern rates make the cost per MB somewhat negligible.
In the fourth phase the cost has fallen so much due to the economies of scale that two facts happen: on the one hand, the technology is subject to fashion and, on the other, this technology easily becomes trash .Let's think about paper, which since 1950 was the key raw material in mass-produced magazines and books.Now they fill not only landfills, but also saturate the streets of our cities in the form of posters, flyers and even papers on the ground.At this point when technology becomes ubiquitous : it is everywhere.Sometimes, in too much quantity.
Some surveys made fun of the concept of chip dumps in the 60s, but the truth is that today the planned obsolescence and desire are raising mountains of junk technology in our landfills.
Cost per genome Source: National Human Genome Research Institute .
All technologies go through these phases.One of the most striking examples comes from the cost of sequencing the human genome.In 1990 the Human Genome Project, one of the most important in humanity, had the cost of 2.7 billion of dollars.Today sequencing the DNA has fallen below 1000 dollars and, as seen in the GATTACA movie, in the future anyone can read the DNA in seconds .
Another technology that has recently fallen below three cents is the cost of storing a gigabyte, which in 1980 was close to one million dollars.In a date as recent as the year 2000, the cost of owning a GB It was about $ 12.Almost no one cares about space on a computer.
Ubiquitous technology eliminates technological friction
Rand Hindi, a professional scientist, adds the term technology friction with ubiquitous technology in his talk How artificial intelligence will make technology disappear .Give the example of how the current technology in smartphones generates dependence on us and how we are hooked on the mobile.
One of the inconveniences that Hindi mentions for modern technology is the constant interruptions of our mobile phones: an email, a tweet, a new video...The problem? Smartphones are not smart at all, and their ads consume a lot of our time: that's technological friction, having to constantly work for technology to work as it should.
The technology, according to Hindi, eliminates one type of friction and generates a new one as more modern technologies upset the old ones.For example, the water well eliminates reliance on rainfall, but it forces you to go to the alternative.A network of pipes that bring water to our home also provides maintenance work (although not as much as having to go to the well and use your pulley).The same example could be given with respect to the electricity at home in front of making the tallow of the candles or cutting down a tree to heat the food.
Rand Hindi adds that the friction of smartphones will grow exponentially by our smartwatches, our latest model headphones and our second or third device at home.The Internet of Things will drive us crazy with constant warnings ( and repetitive) from here to a few years until the artificial intelligences that prioritize, based on our tastes, that we want to attend, how much and when come into play.
The ubiquitous technology promises a future in which, Who knows, maybe the whole humanity is dedicated to art by having nothing to do.Most of the services will be covered in a way that will not even be visible.In the same way that we have no idea how the water comes to our domicile, it is possible that the food that arrives at home today comes through pipes in its basic components and is printed at home.
The truth is that we do not know.What we do know is that a day will come when we will not know how to distinguish what is technology and what is not because, as Mark Weiser said, they are intertwined in the fabric of everyday life until that are indistinguishable from this »
Images | iStock/Pixsooz, iStock/rparys, iStock/jordifa, iStock/grinvalds
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