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

The problem of interference is likely to be commonplace in deployed ubiquitous computing systems. A conceptual framework was proposed in [1] to help researchers address this problem. Evaluating conceptual frameworks such as this is a challenging task; one approach to do so is to design and conduct user studies of how researchers address interference using such frameworks. In this paper we provide insights on the design of such user studies with the help of a formative evaluation of the framework proposed in [1]. We created a scenario in which different components are deployed and interfere with each other, and asked researchers to identify, describe, and propose solutions to interference in this scenario. We observed two groups of researchers tackling the same problem of interference, one group using the interference framework and the other not using the framework. We build on this evaluation to inform the methodology and the research challenges of future user studies of conceptual interference frameworks.

Informing the Design of User Studies on Conceptual Interference Frameworks

mong the many branches of computer science, ubiquitous computing enjoys an unusually distinguished history of creating and deploying prototypes. Why is this? A tempting answer is that many ubicomp researchers and practitioners have backgrounds in subjects such as HCI and systems—areas with a strong focus on learning from deploying work-ing prototypes. However, a more compelling answer might be that ubicomp, unlike almost every other sub-specialty with the exception of HCI, is about embedding com-puting into existing human systems.

Real-World Ubicomp Deployments: Learned

Public display networks are increasingly seeking to provide personalised content to viewers. A key challenge in this area is to how to support conflicting personalisation requirements from multiple concurrent viewers. In this paper we present a four dimensional design space that describes a wide range of approaches to addressing this issue. This design space can be used by developers and researchers to understand how systems can be engineered to deliver an increase in the effective communications bandwidth to viewers while meeting their conflicting content requirements. This is the first attempt at systematically examining the challenges and design choices in this important emerging area.

Designing for conflict: a design space for multi-viewer support in future display networks

This special feature presents a collection of papers that discuss the main research topics that were presented at the Workshop on Middleware for Mobile Computing held on November 16, 2001, in conjunction with Middleware 2001, the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Distributed Systems Platforms in Heidelberg, Germany. Mobile and pervasive computing is an emerging phenomenon that promises to radically advance the benefits of computing in people’s everyday lives. Mark Weiser’s widely quoted 1991 paper envisions a world in which invisible interconnected computers enable people to perform their tasks and interact with other people more effectively. Such hardware and software will be embedded in the users’ physical environment and integrate seamlessly with their everyday tasks. Although significant work has been performed on each aspect of this vision, it is still far from being attained [1]. The focus of the workshop, and this feature, is on the software infrastructure that underlies mobile and pervasive computing applications. More specifically, we focus on the set of software components and services above the operating system, which is broadly referred to as middleware. The goal of the workshop was to identify the requirements on mobile and pervasive middleware and to present ongoing work that is developing and evaluating the platforms and services that make up such middleware. The first part of this feature contains four papers that describe key aspects of mobile and pervasive middleware in some detail.

Introduction to the special feature on Middleware for Mobile and Pervasive Computing

Sensing and networking technology can automate the sharing of pervasively generated content and help people connect with others. In this issue, we present four articles that explore ways to streamline the content sharing process.

Nigel Davies

Papers

Informing the Design of User Studies on Conceptual Interference Frameworks

Real-World Ubicomp Deployments: Learned

Designing for conflict: a design space for multi-viewer support in future display networks

Introduction to the special feature on Middleware for Mobile and Pervasive Computing

Guest Editors' Introduction: Content Sharing