The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) and the success of rich cloud services have pushed the horizon of a new computing paradigm, edge computing, which calls for processing the data at the edge of the network. Edge computing has the potential to address the concerns of response time requirement, battery life constraint, bandwidth cost saving, as well as data safety and privacy. In this paper, we introduce the definition of edge computing, followed by several case studies, ranging from cloud offloading to smart home and city, as well as collaborative edge to materialize the concept of edge computing. Finally, we present several challenges and opportunities in the field of edge computing, and hope this paper will gain attention from the community and inspire more research in this direction.

Edge Computing: Vision and Challenges

Context is a poorly used source of information in our computing environments. As a result, we have an impoverished understanding of what context is and how it can be used. In this paper, we provide an operational definition of context and discuss the different ways in which context can be used by context-aware applications. We also present the Context Toolkit, an architecture that supports the building of these context-aware applications. We discuss the features and abstractions in the toolkit that make the task of building applications easier. Finally, we introduce a new abstraction, a situation which we believe will provide additional support to application designers.

/pdf/understanding-and-using-context-ixmte100q2.pdf

Understanding and Using Context

When humans talk with humans, they are able to use implicit situational information, or context, to increase the conversational bandwidth. Unfortunately, this ability to convey ideas does not transfer well to humans interacting with computers. In traditional interactive computing, users have an impoverished mechanism for providing input to computers. By improving the computer’s access to context, we increase the richness of communication in human-computer interaction and make it possible to produce more useful computational services. The use of context is increasingly important in the fields of handheld and ubiquitous computing, where the user?s context is changing rapidly. In this panel, we want to discuss some of the research challenges in understanding context and in developing context-aware applications.

https://www.cc.gatech.edu/fce/ctk/pubs/HUC99-panel.pdf

Towards a Better Understanding of Context and Context-Awareness

NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Computing devices and applications are now used beyond the desktop, in diverse environments, and this trend toward ubiquitous computing is accelerating. One challenge that remains in this emerging research field is the ability to enhance the behavior of any application by informing it of the context of its use. By context, we refer to any information that characterizes a situation related to the interaction between humans, applications, and the surrounding environment. Context-aware applications promise richer and easier interaction, but the current state of research in this field is still far removed from that vision. This is due to 3 main problems: (a) the notion of context is still ill defined, (b) there is a lack of conceptual models and methods to help drive the design of context-aware applications, and (c) no tools are available to jump-start the development of context-aware applications. In this anchor article, we address these 3 problems in turn. We first define context, identify categories of contextual information, and characterize context-aware application behavior. Though the full impact of context-aware computing requires understanding very subtle and high-level notions of context, we are focusing our efforts on the pieces of context that can be inferred automatically from sensors in a physical environment. We then present a conceptual framework that separates the acquisition and representation of context from the delivery and reaction to context by a context-aware application. We have built a toolkit, the Context Toolkit, that instantiates this conceptual framework and supports the rapid development of a rich space of context-aware applications. We illustrate the usefulness of the conceptual framework by describing a number of context-aware applications that have been prototyped using the Context Toolkit. We also demonstrate how such a framework can support the investigation of important research challenges in the area of context-aware computing.

/pdf/a-conceptual-framework-and-a-toolkit-for-supporting-the-3ct19ji2mn.pdf

A conceptual framework and a toolkit for supporting the rapid prototyping of context-aware applications

We present design insights for developing mobile services for senior citizens which have emerged through substantive engagement with end users and other stakeholders. We describe the aims of the Mobile Age project, and the ideas and rationale for applications that have emerged through a co-creation process. A trusted data platform is proposed along with apps that bring open data and mobile technology to work for an underserved population.

/pdf/mobile-age-open-data-mobile-apps-to-support-independent-jhsbijd7dv.pdf

Mobile Age: Open Data Mobile Apps to Support Independent Living

Future computer environments will include mobile computers which will either be disconnected, weakly interconnected by low speed wireless networks such as GSM, or fully interconnected by high speed networks ranging from Ethernet to ATM. Two key characteristics of such environments are: a heterogeneous processing environment; and rapid and massive fluctuations in the quality of service provided by the underlying communication infrastructure. The first of these issues, i.e. heterogeneity, can be addressed by exploiting emerging distributed systems standards such as the International Standards Organisation Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP), the Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment (OSF-DCE) or the Object Management Group's Common Object Request Broker Architecture (OMG-CORBA). Such standards provide applications with uniform computational models for accessing services and enables them to operate over a variety of processor/operating system configurations. The second of these issues, QoS fluctuations, is, we believe, one of the most fundamental problems in the field of mobile computing. We consider this issue and propose extensions to emerging distributed systems standards to support mobile computing.

/pdf/distributed-systems-support-for-mobile-applications-4pgi4uw8kp.pdf

Distributed systems support for mobile applications

In this paper we explore the notion of application stores (App. Stores) in the context of public display networks. Drawing on our experiences in the development and deployment of an open content distribution system for display networks, we consider some key challenges in providing an App. Store for open public display networks.

Challenges in Developing an App Store for Public Displays – A Position Paper

Welcome to Middleware'98 and to one of England's most beautiful regions.

In recent years the distributed systems community has witnessed a growth in the number of conferences, leading to difficulties in tracking the literature and a consequent loss of awareness of work done by others in this important field. The aim of Middleware'98 is to synthesise many of the smaller workshops and conferences in this area, bringing together research communities which were becoming fragmented.

The conference has been designed to maximise the experience for attendees. This is reflected in the choice of a resort venue (rather than a big city) to ensure a strong focus on interaction with other distributed systems researchers. The programme format incorporates a question-and-answer panel in each session, enabling significant issues to be discussed in the context of related papers and presentations. The invited speakers and tutorials are intended to not only inform the attendees, but also to stimulate discussion and debate.

The key to a good conference is a strong technical programme and this can only be achieved by having a significant number of submissions and a diligent programme committee. Since the composition of the programme committee also influences the submission rate, the role of these individuals is doubly important. In assembling the programme committee, we brought together researchers well-known for their expertise, experience, and leadership in distributed systems research. Our dedicated committee was vital to the creation of a successful programme for Middleware'98, as the conference attracted over 150 technical submissions including 135 full paper submissions. Each was reviewed at least 3 times, resulting in over 500 reviews. The final acceptance ratio for Middleware technical papers was a little over 1 in 5.

The programme presented here reflects the state of the art in middleware research, addressing issues such as ORB architectures, engineering of large-scale systems, and multimedia. The traditional role of middleware as a point of integration and service provision has remained intact, but there is a clear emphasis on emerging "must-have" features such as extensibility, mobility, and quality of service.

Proceedings of the IFIP International Conference on Distributed Systems Platforms and Open Distributed Processing

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our everyday environments. While the number of devices and the degree of connectivity is growing, it is striking that as a society we are increasingly unaware of the locations and purposes of such devices. Indeed, much of the IoT technology being deployed is invisible and does not communicate its presence or purpose to the inhabitants of the spaces within which it is deployed. In this paper, we explore the potential benefits and challenges of constructing IoT maps that record the location of IoT devices. To illustrate the need for such maps, we draw on our experiences from multiple deployments of IoT systems.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3301293.3302375

Nigel Davies

Papers

Mobile Age: Open Data Mobile Apps to Support Independent Living

Distributed systems support for mobile applications

Challenges in Developing an App Store for Public Displays – A Position Paper

Proceedings of the IFIP International Conference on Distributed Systems Platforms and Open Distributed Processing

IoT Maps: Charting the Internet of Things