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Cover Quote: October 2000

On the horizon is ubiquitous computing. The Internet is now a web, still strung sparsely across most of the land. But imagine drawing the threads tighter and tighter until the net becomes a seamless fabric. In the metaphor favored by a research project called Endeavour, centered at the University of California’s Berkeley campus, people will feel like fish submerged in an ocean of data. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working on a similar project called Oxygen, which aims to make computation as pervasive as the air. If all goes well, you will be able to flip open a laptop anywhere in the world and be connected to an all-engulfing atmosphere of information, what might be called the Omninet...

Both Oxygen and Endeavour are promoting the idea of “intelligent spaces,” with computers, cameras and microphones embedded in the walls of rooms and cars. Step inside and the Omninet senses your presence. The unique signature of your voice is a password giving instant access to all your files, which are not located on a single disk drive back at the office but spread throughout cyberspace. Instantly they are retrieved and displayed on the nearest video screen.

Actually, as Michael Dertouzos, director of the M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science has put it, cyberspace will merge with physical space and disappear. Computation will be everywhere.



- George Johnson
The Future Is Coming Faster, 2000
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