Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing

Thesis 75

Everyware must be conservative of face.

Something too rarely considered by the designers of ubiquitous systems is how easily their ordinary operation can place a user's reputation and sense of dignity and worth at risk.

Thomas Disch illustrates this beautifully in his classic 1973 novel 334. The grimly futuristic Manhattan of 334 is a place whose entropic spiral is punctuated only by the transient joys of pills, commercial jingles, and empty sex. The world-weary residents of 334 East 13th Street survive under the aegis of a government welfare agency called MODICUM, a kind of Great Society program gone terminally sour.

In particular, ...