From Sensing to Acting—Can Pervasive Computing Change the World?

Computing technology has indeed become pervasive. Taking a quick look around me, I see computing systems in literally everything—in the cars, televisions, smartphones, restaurants, ski-lifts, heating systems, sports trackers, medical devices, etc. This has been realized by a tremendous development in hardware and software technology in terms of CPUs, memory, sensors, operating systems, network, display, etc. However, looking back at this technology development—and the research done in the field—it strikes me that something is missing. One of the grand visions was to make the computer “invisible,” as framed by Weiser. But it seems like instead of computing becoming more invisible, it is taking up more of the user’s attention. In this article, I argue that this is because (pervasive) computing has only come halfway. Much effort has been done in terms of sensing and understanding the world around the user, while much less effort has been put into helping the user actually doing anything. By providing examples mostly taken from the medical domain, this article discusses if moving from “sensing” and “thinking” to actually “doing” something is possible and what challenges are associated with this movement.