This Pervasive Day: The Potential and Perils of Pervasive Computing - Hardcover

Jeremy Pitt

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1848167482 ISBN 13: 9781848167483

Publisher: Imperial College Press, 2012

Synopsis

Imagine a world where your clothes sense your blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. Suppose the sensors transmit this information to the cloud , continuously and unobtrusively. Suppose artificial intelligence in the cloud detects an anomaly. Suppose it tells your doctor: sighs of relief all round. But then suppose it tells an actuary, who tells your insurer, who tells your employer ... This is the world of pervasive adaptation. This Pervasive Day explores the potential and perils of daily living with pervasive adaptive computing. This is the result of saturating ourselves and our physical environment with sensors, cameras and devices, all connected to and inter-connected by global networks and computers, which can run increasingly intelligent machine-learning and data fusion algorithms on datasets that could be generated by the entire human population. This book takes as its unifying theme Ira Levin's 1970 science fiction novel This Perfect Day to expose both potential innovations and controversial social issues. It explores the science and technology of pervasive adaptation through a human-centred and socio-technical perspective within the cultural, ethical and legal context of contemporary life. It discusses how pervasive adaptation could provide the foundations for a new range of life-enhancing and planet-saving applications in health, sustainability and assistive living. On the other hand, with the recording, storage and processing of every action, emotion and thought, there also arise the possibilities for unwarranted surveillance, invasions of privacy, loss of civil liberties and commercial exploitation. This Pervasive Day is an insightful read for anyone concerned with the social impact of technology. Written by experienced technologists with a deep interest in computational intelligence, human-computer interaction and ambient systems, This Pervasive Day is a remarkable single source of reference a fusion of several technical disciplines that makes for a broad scope of investigation within the domains of pervasive computing. Unifying, informative and thought-provoking, This Pervasive Day takes its place as a landmark title that will challenge the perceptions of the technologists and policy-makers, the pragmatists and the theorists, the doers and the thought-leaders.

About this title

From the Back Cover

This book explores the potentials - and perils and pitfalls - of the new technology of pervasive adaptation. Miniaturisation and Moore's Law have combined to make pervasive computing a reality, while advances in intelligent software make adaptation of those pervasive computing environments possible.

This opens up a wide range of interesting and beneficial applications in health, commerce and entertainment; it also offers the possibility of every behaviour, preference and even emotion being sensed and recorded digitally, and then, possibly, being used in a way that is less desirable: for surveillance, invasions of privacy, reduction or removal of rights.

This Pervasive Day: The Potential and Perils of Pervasive Computing will investigate the science and technology of pervasive adaptation from a human-centred perspective, and consider social, ethical and legal issues. It will offer an overall view of innovative technologies from a techno-political standpoint, with recommendations where research should (or not) go into, as well as bringing up specific controversial issues, on which some of the contributors might not be in full agreement.

Edition details

• Publisher: Imperial College Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1848167482
• ISBN 13: 9781848167483
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 314
• Editor: Jeremy Pitt