Ubiquitous Computing
In the 1950s, scientists first developed integrated circuits: the miniature silicon microchips in the guts of every computer. These integrated circuits allowed calculations that once required a machine the size of a room to take place on chips the size of a fingernail, revolutionizing electronics and ushering in a new era of the information age. Although most chips produced in the first years of integrated circuits were used in the guidance systems of ballistic missiles or the space program, the demand for chips drove production costs down and the technology was rapidly applied to new purposes.
From computing’s early days, silicon chip developers were aware of the potency of the technology they were developing and its implications for society. In a seminal 1965 article in the journal Electronics, Intel founder Gordon E. Moore wrote that “Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers—or at least terminals connected to a central computer—automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment.”[1] In the same article, Moore postulated the now famous “Moore’s Law”, which states that the number of transistors capable of being produced on a silicon chip will double approximately every two years. World population compared to the number of microchips globally.
The implication of Moore’s Law, which is perhaps better understood as a development guideline, is that chips will get both smaller and cheaper at an exponential rate. The personal computer and the cell phone were nearly twenty years away when Moore developed his “law”—the technologies have advanced far beyond what could be imagined in 1965. In the United States, most developed nations, and even many developing countries, one no longer marvels that there is a computer in every home, or even in every pocket—they are taken for granted. Indeed, most Americans are served by dozens of computer chips each every day—not just in mobile phones and laptops, but in traffic lights, kitchen appliances, and even credit cards.
Ubiquitous Computing
Internationally, the number of microchips in the world surpassed the number of people in the world in approximately 1994.[2] Although the microchips are strongly concentrated in wealthier parts of the world, reinforcing existing power structures, they are also finding their way into different corners of the earth at a faster rate than many previous technologies. In 2008, for example, Angola (considered Africa’s least developed nation by the UN) had 37.59 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 residents. Although the country only had enough phones for a third of its population, these wireless phones accounted for 98.3% of the nation’s phone lines.[3] Thus while at the moment the condition is not universal, it is nonetheless accurate to say that most of the world has entered an era of ubiquitous computing.
The most significant impacts of ubiquitous computing on the cultural landscape come not from the fact that computer chips are invisibly permeating the urban environment, but from the fact that those chips are networked to each other. From its mythical origins as ARPANET, the US Defense project to build a decentralized, nuclear-attack-proof network system, the Internet has evolved into an unprecedented international connective entity.[4] Its decentralized structure has allowed the Internet to link and envelop many different networks and interface methods, joining technologies like Global Positioning System satellites, undersea fiber optic cables, and Radio Frequency Identification Tags into a grand unified network. Unlike radio or television, in which 1-way communications are broadcast from a powerful central source to many receivers, the Internet has no central core.
Instead, communication over the Internet uses packet-switching, a technique to send data along a variable set of pathways. Packet-switching works by breaking information into 512k packets and attaching a header with information about where the information is meant to be sent. The packets are then released into the network, where they bounce from node to node until they are reassembled with the other packets to recreate the original information.[5] In terms of preventing the network from being disrupted by a nuclear attack (the nominal goal of the ARPANET project) the packet switching method is highly effective because packets can find multiple routes through a network on their way to a destination. Packet switching also allows connections to be shared between many nodes, as packets can flow along one connection alongside packets from multiple sources.
The actual connective fiber of the Internet that connects nodes has evolved dramatically since the days of ARPANET. Early digital networks either shared telephone cables or used the same technologies, sending electronic signals over copper wires. The low bandwidth of these wires—the amount of information that they can carry—limited the kinds of information that could be exchanged. High resolution videos, for example, could not be viewed in real-time across such a network, and additional cables needed to be added to networks to accommodate more users. The breakthrough that allowed network capacities to reach the level they achieve today was the introduction of fiber-optic cable,
Fiber optic cables, first produced by Corning Glass in the early 1970s, are long strands of transparent glass filaments through which signals are sent at the speed of light.[6] Fiber optic connections currently serve as a the backbone of the Internet, often buried underground with other utilities. Where fiber optic cables terminate, there are routers and switches that link to the regional and local networks of private Internet Service Providers (ISPs), large corporate and institutional networks, and wireless systems like CDMA, GSM, and 3G. The tail ends of these regional and local networks, the so-called “last mile”, are where individual end users and their social activities hook into the network.[7]
Networks emerge in landscapes in several key ways that landscape architects can respond to. Most obviously there is the placement and design of embedded network infrastructure like cell towers and large screens, but mobile infrastructural elements like phones, iPods, and cameras also offer ways to change a place’s use and experience. Furthermore, by working with online frameworks to structure participation in a project, environmental designers may coordinate social activity in space, creating new means of researching and making places.
[1] Gordon Moore, “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits,” Electronics, Volume 38, Number 8, April 19, 1965, 1.
[2] Malcolm McCullough, Digital Ground : Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004), 5.
[3] The United Nations Office of the High Representative for Least Developed Countries, “UN-OHRLLS :: Least Developed Countries: Country profiles,” http://www.unohrlls.org/en/ldc/related/62/, And International Telecommunication Union (ITU), “ICT Statistic Database. Country Data by Region,” http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Reporting/ShowReportFrame.aspx?ReportName=/WTI/CellularSubscribersPublic&ReportFormat=HTML4.0&RP_intYear=2008&RP_intLanguageID=1&RP_bitLiveData=False.
[4] Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, (Cambridge, Mass, Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 6.
[5] Barry M. Leiner et. al., “Internet Society (ISOC): All About the Internet: History of the Internet,” http://www.isoc.org/Internet/history/brief.shtml and Teach-ICT, “What is Packet Switching?,” http://www.teach-ict.com/technology_explained/packet_switching/packet_switching.html.
[6] Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, (Cambridge, Mass, Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 47. Compare the 48 channels (or 48 bits per second of data) that first transatlantic phone cables could handle in 1956 to the 40,000 bits per second carried by the first fiber optic cable (1988). (And compare that to the 5,120,000,000,000 bits per second carried by fiber optic cables constructed in 2003.) Tyco Telecommunications, Network Services on the Tyco Global Network—TGN, Presentation to LISHEP, February 17, 2004, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Retrieved on November 22, 2006. (Powerpoint downloaded via http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/VSNL-Transatlantic-%28cable-system%29, April 23, 2010.)
[7] Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, (New Haven Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), 404.
From computing’s early days, silicon chip developers were aware of the potency of the technology they were developing and its implications for society. In a seminal 1965 article in the journal Electronics, Intel founder Gordon E. Moore wrote that “Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers—or at least terminals connected to a central computer—automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment.”[1] In the same article, Moore postulated the now famous “Moore’s Law”, which states that the number of transistors capable of being produced on a silicon chip will double approximately every two years. World population compared to the number of microchips globally.
The implication of Moore’s Law, which is perhaps better understood as a development guideline, is that chips will get both smaller and cheaper at an exponential rate. The personal computer and the cell phone were nearly twenty years away when Moore developed his “law”—the technologies have advanced far beyond what could be imagined in 1965. In the United States, most developed nations, and even many developing countries, one no longer marvels that there is a computer in every home, or even in every pocket—they are taken for granted. Indeed, most Americans are served by dozens of computer chips each every day—not just in mobile phones and laptops, but in traffic lights, kitchen appliances, and even credit cards.
Ubiquitous Computing
Internationally, the number of microchips in the world surpassed the number of people in the world in approximately 1994.[2] Although the microchips are strongly concentrated in wealthier parts of the world, reinforcing existing power structures, they are also finding their way into different corners of the earth at a faster rate than many previous technologies. In 2008, for example, Angola (considered Africa’s least developed nation by the UN) had 37.59 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 residents. Although the country only had enough phones for a third of its population, these wireless phones accounted for 98.3% of the nation’s phone lines.[3] Thus while at the moment the condition is not universal, it is nonetheless accurate to say that most of the world has entered an era of ubiquitous computing.
The most significant impacts of ubiquitous computing on the cultural landscape come not from the fact that computer chips are invisibly permeating the urban environment, but from the fact that those chips are networked to each other. From its mythical origins as ARPANET, the US Defense project to build a decentralized, nuclear-attack-proof network system, the Internet has evolved into an unprecedented international connective entity.[4] Its decentralized structure has allowed the Internet to link and envelop many different networks and interface methods, joining technologies like Global Positioning System satellites, undersea fiber optic cables, and Radio Frequency Identification Tags into a grand unified network. Unlike radio or television, in which 1-way communications are broadcast from a powerful central source to many receivers, the Internet has no central core.
Instead, communication over the Internet uses packet-switching, a technique to send data along a variable set of pathways. Packet-switching works by breaking information into 512k packets and attaching a header with information about where the information is meant to be sent. The packets are then released into the network, where they bounce from node to node until they are reassembled with the other packets to recreate the original information.[5] In terms of preventing the network from being disrupted by a nuclear attack (the nominal goal of the ARPANET project) the packet switching method is highly effective because packets can find multiple routes through a network on their way to a destination. Packet switching also allows connections to be shared between many nodes, as packets can flow along one connection alongside packets from multiple sources.
The actual connective fiber of the Internet that connects nodes has evolved dramatically since the days of ARPANET. Early digital networks either shared telephone cables or used the same technologies, sending electronic signals over copper wires. The low bandwidth of these wires—the amount of information that they can carry—limited the kinds of information that could be exchanged. High resolution videos, for example, could not be viewed in real-time across such a network, and additional cables needed to be added to networks to accommodate more users. The breakthrough that allowed network capacities to reach the level they achieve today was the introduction of fiber-optic cable,
Fiber optic cables, first produced by Corning Glass in the early 1970s, are long strands of transparent glass filaments through which signals are sent at the speed of light.[6] Fiber optic connections currently serve as a the backbone of the Internet, often buried underground with other utilities. Where fiber optic cables terminate, there are routers and switches that link to the regional and local networks of private Internet Service Providers (ISPs), large corporate and institutional networks, and wireless systems like CDMA, GSM, and 3G. The tail ends of these regional and local networks, the so-called “last mile”, are where individual end users and their social activities hook into the network.[7]
Networks emerge in landscapes in several key ways that landscape architects can respond to. Most obviously there is the placement and design of embedded network infrastructure like cell towers and large screens, but mobile infrastructural elements like phones, iPods, and cameras also offer ways to change a place’s use and experience. Furthermore, by working with online frameworks to structure participation in a project, environmental designers may coordinate social activity in space, creating new means of researching and making places.
[1] Gordon Moore, “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits,” Electronics, Volume 38, Number 8, April 19, 1965, 1.
[2] Malcolm McCullough, Digital Ground : Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004), 5.
[3] The United Nations Office of the High Representative for Least Developed Countries, “UN-OHRLLS :: Least Developed Countries: Country profiles,” http://www.unohrlls.org/en/ldc/related/62/, And International Telecommunication Union (ITU), “ICT Statistic Database. Country Data by Region,” http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Reporting/ShowReportFrame.aspx?ReportName=/WTI/CellularSubscribersPublic&ReportFormat=HTML4.0&RP_intYear=2008&RP_intLanguageID=1&RP_bitLiveData=False.
[4] Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, (Cambridge, Mass, Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 6.
[5] Barry M. Leiner et. al., “Internet Society (ISOC): All About the Internet: History of the Internet,” http://www.isoc.org/Internet/history/brief.shtml and Teach-ICT, “What is Packet Switching?,” http://www.teach-ict.com/technology_explained/packet_switching/packet_switching.html.
[6] Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, (Cambridge, Mass, Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 47. Compare the 48 channels (or 48 bits per second of data) that first transatlantic phone cables could handle in 1956 to the 40,000 bits per second carried by the first fiber optic cable (1988). (And compare that to the 5,120,000,000,000 bits per second carried by fiber optic cables constructed in 2003.) Tyco Telecommunications, Network Services on the Tyco Global Network—TGN, Presentation to LISHEP, February 17, 2004, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Retrieved on November 22, 2006. (Powerpoint downloaded via http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/VSNL-Transatlantic-%28cable-system%29, April 23, 2010.)
[7] Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, (New Haven Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), 404.
