Editorial for Special Issue on Pervasive Computing

Pervasive (or Ubiquitous) Computing aims to seamlessly integrate computing and communication with our environment so as to make our day-today activities the central focus rather than the computing or communication devices per se. Mark Weiser in his 1991 visionary paper " The Computer for 21st Century " laid the foundations of this field. Last decade has seen a steady increase in the momentum for his ideas. This is mainly due to dramatic increase in the availability of personal digital assistants (PDAs), wireless networking solutions, and embedded computing devices. For example, wirelessly connected organizers and smart phones are becoming popular, and digital computing in some form is now an integral part of numerous everyday appliances. This has led to a fundamental shift in the way we perceive computing and computers. Computers are no longer stand alone special purpose machines to be used by experts; rather, they are ubiquitously present in a networked environment to serve myriad needs of everyday life. The change in our perception of computing and computing devices and their ever increasing presence in our everyday life in form of smart spaces is the subject of the field of pervasive computing. The word pervasive means having power to spread throughout. Pervasive Computing is an environment where people interact with various companion, embedded, or invisible computers. It essentially means to enable networked devices to be aware of their surroundings and peers, and to be capable to provide services to and use services from peers effectively. Pervasive computing encompasses many different technologies, such as mobile computing and wearable computers, and is the enabling technology for such applications as e-commerce and connected home. However, while encompassing the issue of traditional distributed computing and mobile computing, pervasive computing introduces several issue which are specific to this field such as how can computing devices effectively interact with smart spaces which are rich in embedded and wirelessly communicating and sensing devices; how to make the interaction between the environment and computing devices minimally intrusive/distracting; how to localize the various interactions so as to have scalable pervasive computing environments; and finally how to deal with different degree of smartness in various smart spaces one encounters. Recently, many research groups in companies and universities have proposed several solutions towards improving the state-of-the-art in pervasive computing. There are many initiatives to investigate issues such as user interfaces, collaborative environments, new computing paradigms, information presentation, and e-commerce. The purpose …