ID 7457
Markus Riegler
Ubiquitous Computing and
the Impact on Information
Economy
Diplomarbeit
WHU Koblenz - Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensführung
Otto-Beisheim-Hochschule
Lehrstuhl für Electronic Business
Abgabe August 2003
ID 7457
Riegler, Markus: Ubiquitous Computing and the Impact on Information Economy
Hamburg: Diplomica GmbH, 2003
Zugl.: WHU Koblenz - Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensführung - Otto-
Beisheim-Hochschule, Universität, Diplomarbeit, 2003
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i
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations...iv
Executive Summary ...v
1.
Ubiquitous Computing...1
1.1 The Vision ...1
1.2 History and Elements ...3
1.2.1 History ...3
1.2.2 Elements and Definition ...3
1.3 Enabling Technologies...5
1.3.1 Radiofrequency Identification Technology ...5
1.3.2 Communications Backbone ...8
1.3.3 User Interfaces...10
1.3.4 "Smart Dust"...12
2.
Information Economy ...13
2.1 Information as a good ...13
2.2 Types of Information Goods...14
2.3 Creation and Cost Structure of Information Goods...15
2.4 Distribution of Information ...16
2.5 Pricing and Rights Management...17
2.5.1 Monetary Pricing ...17
2.5.2 Attention Economics ...19
ii
3.
The New Information Economy...21
3.1 Assumptions...21
3.2 Effects on Commercially Published Content...22
3.2.2 Changes in Creation and Processing...24
3.2.3 Changes in Distribution and Value Capturing ...25
3.2.4 Changes in Pricing ...25
3.3 Effects on Private Personal Information...27
3.4 Effects on Private Business Information ...30
4.
Issues and Scenarios ...34
4.1 Current Issues...34
4.1.1 Privacy Issue...34
4.1.2 Security Issue...35
4.1.3 Technological Issues...36
4.1.4 Control Issue ...38
4.2 Four Scenarios...40
4.2.1 Low Acceptance...40
4.2.2 Medium Acceptance...42
4.2.3 High Acceptance ...45
4.2.4 Fully Integrated UC Environment ...46
5.
Conclusion...49
iii
Appendix Overview of Scenarios...I
Sources ...II
Literature ...II
Reports...II
Online Resources...III
iv
List of Abbreviations
2.5G
Upgraded 2
nd
generation cellular phone network, e.g. GPRS
3G
3
rd
generation cellular phone network, e.g. UMTS
CRM
Customer Relationship Management
EPC
Electronic Product Code
ERP
Enterprise Resource Planning
GPRS
General Packet Radio Service
IE
Information Economy
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ONS
Object Name Services
PARC
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
PML
Physical Markup Language
RFID
Radio Frequency Identification
RFID
Radio Frequency Identification
SCM
Supply Chain Management
TDMA
Time Division Multiple Access
UC
Ubiquitous Computing
UMTS
Universal Mobile Telecommunication System
UPC
Uniform Product Code
USD
US Dollar
W-LAN
Wireless LAN, e.g. IEEE 802.11-standards family
WMS
Warehouse Management Systems
WWW
World Wide Web
XML
Extensible Markup Language
v
Executive Summary
The emerging technology named "Ubiquitous Computing" is characterized by
an increasingly "smart" and self-aware environment. By placing "smart tags" on
objects that might also host miniature microprocessors, everyday objects will be
able to:
· identify themselves to other objects,
· connect to each other to work in joined systems,
· connect to a communications infrastructure, or
· manipulate their own state or the state of other objects
Information economy will be affected by the new possibilities of monitoring, and
analyzing the environment by collecting data and acting autonomously based
upon this information.
Previously untapped sources of information e.g. due to volume or complexity
of observations will become available. This will lead to a higher validity of
observations and could make new conclusions possible. New or more efficient
processes enable new business models or improve existing ones.
The questions of privacy, security, technology and control over the
infrastructure can only be speculated about and shall only be mentioned in this
paper, neither discussed in depth nor solved.
Ubiquitous computing is considered as a highly relevant outlook of
technological developments over the next decades. Comparatively "primitive"
systems have already begun to be integrated in the workflow of many companies
most notably in the fields of Supply Chain Management and Logistics.
After analyzing a set of scenarios it would appear that what we consider the
information economy today will not change in essence, but that UC enables a
new scope and a new quality of information that will add to it.
1
1. Ubiquitous Computing
1.1 The Vision
Chris Jones is sitting on the train, commuting to work. His eyes are wandering
around, scanning the motion advertisement screens on the wall opposite of him.
Right across from his seat, a musical show is advertised on a 2' x 1' panel.
"Tickets for tonight's shows are still available! Order now and receive a free
category update," it reads on the display. Chris has heard of the musical before,
so he is intrigued. Rolling up his jacket, he exposes a screen in the sleeve of his
shirt. With a few taps on the screen he has accessed his calendar; tonight would
be good for him. The link to his wife's calendar allows him to find out, that she
has no prior engagements as well. He wants to find out more about the musical
before making any further steps toward purchasing the tickets, so he brings up
his web browser and with another few taps accesses an opinion portal. He waves
a sensor in his sleeve at the display opposite of him, the portal recognizes the
show that is advertised here and brings up user opinions. They all read rather
well and the portal algorithm also judges, "Based on your submitted profile and
rating history you are very likely to enjoy this show." Waving the sensor at the
display a second time, a window for ticket sales opens on his sleeve display. "At
these discounts, tickets are a steal", Chris thinks to himself. Selecting a pair of 4
th
row seats he is about to finish the transaction, when he decides to make sure his
wife really is available that night. However, she is already in a meeting. Her
system gathered this information from her location and the surrounding people,
so the video phone feature has turned itself off. She is still receiving instant
messages. "Are you free tonight for a small surprise", Chris softly says into his
sleeve, not wanting to arouse too much attention around him. The voice
recognition software displays the message and submits it. A few seconds later he
sees his wife's handwriting appear on his screen. "Sure. I'll be taking off at
around 5pm today." That should be enough time; the show doesn't start until 8pm.
Chris brings up the transaction again and confirms the form, which had been pre-
populated with his personal profile information. However, a warning screen
comes up, "Dear Mr. Jones, please be advised that your wife already has a
booking for two tickets to this show for next Wednesday. Are you sure you want
to continue?" With a small chuckle he leans back. "So this is what she was
planning for my birthday surprise..." But while he is looking up to the ceiling he
sees another ad for an "experiential dining" restaurant, which looks like fun in the
ad. He decides not to tell his wife about the slight mishap with the show and
books a table for two, without checking the opinion portal this time. After all, what
would life be without surprises?
2
This little story tries to give an example of how life could be in a ubiquitous
computing (UC) environment. There are numerous projects of many IT related
companies that revolve around the concepts and the development of applications
for UC like the one above. Most notable in this domain is probably hp's
"Cooltown" project. On the research side, conceptual and technical white papers
underline the research aspect of this project, on the consumer side, high quality
marketing videos try to demonstrate, what makes it "cool" to live in "Cooltown".
1
There are a wide number of other visionaries out there, NTT DoCoMo,
Microsoft, and the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to name just a few
more. All those visions do not differ from each other significantly. They are all
based on the UC idea, which has been developed and refined by scholars for the
past decade.
This paper does not focus on the vision, however. UC, being synonymous for
information provision as well as gathering, will have an impact on the way
information will be gathered, processed, used, and valued. This paper wants to
demonstrate that the information economy we know today will in essence not
change. UC, however, will result in increased quality and scope by making
available new applications and services.
In order to demonstrate this, it is necessary to get an understanding of UC and
a technological background. An overview of UC specific elements is given in
chapter 1.2, an overview of enabling technologies can be found in chapter 1.3.
Chapter 2 deepens the understanding of the information economy and the chain
of creating, pricing and distributing published content. In chapter 3, changes to
this chain will be explained. Chapter 4 briefly touches issues arising from a UC
environment and in detail lays out four scenarios. These scenarios are this
author's estimates based on different curves of adoption and explain the impact
of UC on the information economy in every single one.
1
Hewlett-Packard (2003).
3
1.2 History and Elements
1.2.1 History
The development of microprocessors has followed an astonishingly constant
factor, first discovered in 1964 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. He observed
that the performance of microprocessors
2
roughly doubled every 18 months, all
other parameters held equal. Modern microprocessors not only gain in
processing power, but at the same time decrease in size, in energy consumption,
and important for the business perspective in cost.
This finding today also known as Moore's Law led Mark Weiser at Xerox
PARC to the conclusion that one day processors will be small and cheap enough
to be unobtrusively integrated into everyday objects, giving these objects
"smartness" processing power. In 1991 he coined the term "Ubiquitous
Computing" (UC) for this vision which he later defined as "the method of
enhancing computer use by making many computers available throughout the
physical environment, but making them effectively invisible to the user."
3
1.2.2 Elements and Definition
Over the years, scholars developed a clearer mutual understanding of what UC
should be, what it entails, and what it requires. A number of definitions have been
proposed. These definitions contain some or all of the following elements:
4
- The reach of current communication networks will increase; different
purpose networks of various generations will be used in a complementary
manner in order to achieve and omni-present communication environment.
This allows for access to the network anytime and anyplace.
- Microprocessors will decrease in size; capable of a limited processing set
these miniature processors will eventually be the size of small fibers or dust
particles, making them unobtrusively small. This allows for integration in any
everyday item to make it "smart".
2
Measured in million instructions per second (MIPS).
3
Weiser (2003).
4
Ref. Fleisch / Mattern / Billinger (2003).
4
- With the decreasing size of microprocessors and the integration into
everyday objects user interfaces will change. Voice recognition, remote user
interfaces, entire portals for individual objects, and next generation light
emitting polymer displays will allow for communicating with the objects as
well as for monitoring their status. The computing aspect will disappear.
- Sensors will enable "smart" objects to gather data and process the findings.
The sensory input can either be reported or even processed by the object
itself, e.g. it can be compared to programmed data ranges. In case of
deviation countermeasures can be deployed.
- The "smart" objects will sense communication partners in their vicinity.
Those can be other "smart" objects, communication networks access or
human users. Depending on their programming objects will be able to
spontaneously form networks and manipulate their own or other objects'
status if necessary. This allows for a high automation of tasks and
processes.
- The real world will in essence be simplified and modeled as a virtual world
representing all network nodes (i.e. every smart object, every network
access point and every location of either). This allows for the gap between
virtual and real world to decrease significantly in width.
- Every individual real object will have a virtual counterpart. This counterpart
will include more information about the product and go beyond the limited
storage and processing power of the physical object.
- On a more abstract level, there will also be purely virtual objects which can
be considered "helper objects" or macro objects. These are activated by a
status change in one object and trigger status changes in other objects or
run reporting routines.
- Objects can always be located, either by recent scan locations or GPS. This
enables them to "understand" more about the context they are currently
used in and (in case of empowered objects) act accordingly.
Systems that fulfill some of these requirements are already in place today on a
small scale both in areas of consumer and business applications. They are
individually implemented and individually operating solutions.
5
1.3 Enabling Technologies
In order to understand just how UC works and how it will influence information
economy it is necessary to understand the technical background, i.e. how UC will
work or is likely to work.
The above mentioned elements pose a number of challenges for technology.
Underlying assumptions for the feasibility are the continuation of Moore's law for
the processors as well as a similar, generalized Moore's Law that appears to
have the same if not a stronger effect on storage and bandwidth for
communication. The cycles for the generalized Moore's law have a length of
12 36 months for most important technology indicators.
5
This paper assumes
for simplicity that these laws will hold true over at least the next 10 years
6
.
Bandwidth, storage space, and processing power of microprocessors will be
assumed as sufficiently advanced for a UC system and not pose a threat to
overall feasibility of the system. For chapter 4, these assumptions are lifted. New
assumptions will be made based on the individual scenario.
Although in early stages of their development, many of the technologies
required for UC already exist. This chapter tries to give an overview of how these
technologies can contribute to a UC environment, what their substitutes are, and
to show the current issues and necessary improvements for a large scale
deployment.
1.3.1 Radiofrequency Identification Technology
7
Objects can be uniquely identified using radiofrequency identification (RFID).
RFID is a tag-based system. Each tag can hold a certain number of bytes worth
of information. A reader/writer unit can retrieve or store information in the tags
which then hands over this data to the system for processing. This is likely going
to be a key technology in object identification. Depending on the tags used, it
allows an identification of an object down to the level of individual object
instances.
5
Mattern (2001a).
6
Following an estimate by Mattern (2001a).
7
The following ref. Microlise (2003).
6
1.3.1.1 RFID Tags
A tag consists of three key elements: the RF antenna for communicating,
memory for storage, and integrated circuitry for management. This layout is the
typical one for a so called passive tag. It draws the power for sending its stored
memory from the electromagnetic field emitted by the reader/writer unit by
induction. It does not have any need for a power source, this way it is not
constantly transmitting. On the other hand, active tags additionally have an
integrated battery as power source. The main differences between active and
passive tags are memory capacity as larger memory needs to be constantly
kept powered and input/output (I/O) capabilities. This can be useful for use with
integrated sensors that might require a constant power supply. Lastly, active tags
have a farther transmission range (up to 330 ft) than passive tags (up to 5 ft).
The memory can contain a unique identifier number and in most cases space
for free usage. In some cases, the tags will only allow to have their identifier read
(read only tags), some can be written to once but read many times (WORM), and
a third type is fully read/write capable, information can be deleted, altered or
added at any given time.
As mentioned above, a tag can also include sensors in the design. These
sensors can be of various kinds, e.g. temperature, pressure, acceleration or
some other physical state. The data gathered by these sensors is saved in the
memory of the tag. Current memory sizes are approximately 512 bytes for
passive tags and 32 kilobytes for active tags.
RFID tags have been developed as early as World War II, but only in recent
decades interest in this technology has lead to a volume at which production cost
become attractive for large scale deployment.
8
Today's tags depending on size,
design and capabilities cost from 0.30 USD to as much as 50.00 USD.
9
Predecessors of current advanced RFID tags are often considered to be the
binary anti-theft devices found widely spread in today's retail industry. However,
current passive RFID tags have reached the size of larger dust particles,
approximately 2 mm³ in size.
As RFID tags have similar identifying properties as a current Uniform Product
Code (UPC) barcode, it is expected that RFID will complement or replace UPC
barcodes with a proposed Electronic Product Code (EPC) system. This is subject
8
RFID Journal (2003).
9
RFID Journal (2003).
Ende der Leseprobe aus 62 Seiten
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- , 2003, Ubiquitous Computing and the Impact on Information Economy, Hamburg, Bedey Media GmbH, https://www.diplom.de/document/222738
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