Ubiquitous Computing in Science and Engineering Research Laboratories: A case study from biomedical engineering

This paper addresses the ubiquitous nature of computing in contemporary science and engineering research laboratories. We describe three kinds of ubiquitous computing possibilities for bioscience and engineering: historically evolved ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous computing by design, and in silico biology. Using a combination of ethnography and cognitive-historical analysis, our observations and analysis support the vision of ubiquitous and invisible computing as already a fact in biomedical engineering environments. We analyze these labs as evolving distributed cognitive systems, and present two case studies of the role of information processing technology within one lab