For years, digital processing and communication capacities have been integrated in machines other than computers: mobile phones, cars, white goods, machine tools… there are already far more micro-processors in these objects than there are computers. The concept of “ubiquitous computing” goes even further still: it involves equipping most objects, spaces, even bodies with microchips, giving us a greater capacity for knowledge and a greater ability to act on our environment – and ourselves. It also involves changing the status of IT, putting it at the service of humans and their daily needs (or so the story goes). In so doing, it will make said technology “disappear,” become buried so that it functions almost without us knowing. Alan Greenfield, who coined the term “everyware” talks about “dissolving” IT into our everyday behaviours («information processing dissolving in behavior»). The EU talks about “ambient intelligence,” a vision in which “people are surrounded by intelligent intuitive interfaces that are embedded in all kinds of objects and an environment that is capable of recognising and responding to the presence of different individuals in a seamless, unobtrusive and often invisible way.” This is not a particularly futurist perspective – it has already started to happen. But if we look closely, it hides the potential for considerable transformation of our relationships with technology, objects, environments, and ourselves.

What’s it all about?

Ubiquitous computing stems from a series of converging technical advances: the miniaturisation of processors, the ubiquity of wireless and wired networks, “intelligent agents,” auto-organized networks, and natural interfaces…

About microchips…

Millions of micro chips are gradually being inserted in (or on) domestic appliances, packaging, vehicles, everyday objects, public spaces… and also on the 120 000 trees in Paris, floodable regions, flammable forests, pets…

RFID antenna produced by an ink jet printer (Cima NanoTech)|

These chips can be for simple identification purposes: RFID “labels,” known as “passive microchips” have no battery and are only activated when they pass under an electromagnetic laser beam and transmit an ID. They are inexpensive and easy to make… we can even print them. They are slowly replacing barcodes and probably will replace chipped cards (the Oyster card on the London underground and many credit cards already use cards like this). However, slightly more complex and (for now) larger microchips can fulfil other functions: they garner information from the environment (temperature, air pressure, humidity, sound, light…) using sensors, stock and process certain information and communicate it to other microchips or to processing centres, and then react to it via an actuator, open a door, set off an alarm, stop or start irrigating a field, contact people…