Everything Online All The Time

As cyberspace continues to evolve, taking on an identity of its own rather than mimicking preexisting systems, it becomes increasingly difficult to describe innovations in familiar terms. Sure, e-mail is like mail, except "electronic." But imagine, if you can, what a paper version of a Newsgroup might be like. So it's not surprising that people have difficulty grasping the full implications of the wireless network research going on here at the UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Science.

There is little doubt we're going to be exchanging less information using our familiar desktop computers and more using the proliferation of hand-held, network devices like Palmtops and cellular telephones. And that's just the beginning. These are only the first small steps in an extraordinary new direction. Wireless networking will make it possible for cyberspace to evolve way beyond what most people can imagine. If it gives you the slightest pause to see people standing around on street corners, talking into telephones seemingly attached to nothing, then the changes wireless networking will bring will make you think you are dreaming.

What this is about is changing the relationship between people and computers. The first room-size computers were so unwieldy that each required its own team of people to service it. Personal computers cut the ratio down to one computer for each person. Wireless networking is laying the groundwork for an even greater change. Many computers will serve many people. They will be everywhere and they will be taking care of business for us all the time.

Although "ubiquitous" and "embedded" are the current buzzwords, neither adequately suggests the seamlessness which will characterize the wireless era. "Sensorium" or "nervous system" is probably a more appropriate metaphor, because once implemented, such a system will constantly report upon its surroundings. It will also be capable of responding - not only to individual demands - but based upon its own decision-making capabilities as well. Computers will merge transparently into the fabric of our environment, blurring the line between human consciousness and machine computations. And you won't even need to click anything.

Sometime this year, the amount of data passing over the global networks is expected to exceed the amount of voice traffic they carry. With rare exception, however, all this data originates from other human beings.

Meanwhile, there are approximately five billion unconnected microprocessors built each year. So common most people take them for granted, these are the chips that power microwave ovens, automotive systems and other appliances. They are collecting all kinds of data and are ready to accept all kinds of instructions, but are unable to communicate with each other or the outside world.

"Unfortunately, due to the cost of conventional wireline network installation," says William J. Kaiser, chairman of UCLA's Electrical Engineering Department, "these devices are largely restricted to stand-alone, isolated products and are invisible to the information infrastructure."

What is needed is a "bridge between the physical world and the exponentially growing information infrastructure," Kaiser says. UCLA's engineers are building that bridge by linking low-cost, Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) with wireless network technologies. These tiny devices, which researchers call Wireless Integrated Networks (WINS), hold the promise of coupling the physical world with cyberspace.

"In the near future," Kaiser says, "it will be possible to seamlessly join the existing information infrastructure with the physical world."

Citing Metcalf's Law which states the total value of a network is equal to the square of the number of subscribers, Kaiser notes that merely adding existing devices would have an enormous impact on the Internet. Researchers like Kaiser and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Greg Pottie envision embedded processors becoming so widespread their presence will make the network almost omniscient; a global cyber nervous system, becoming more and more valuable as it is joined by the billions of devices gathering and sharing information about their surroundings.

The current "user-to-user network" relationship will give way to a "user-to-physical world network," with many computers serving every human being. As Pottie says: "The cyber world is getting ready to meet the physical world - with far-reaching results."

The challenge is to make these ubiquitous and distributed computers reliable, secure and transparent to users. On a scale as vast as the universe and as intimate as a single human cell, such devices will watch over everything from manufacturing processes to health care. They will be everywhere, involved in all human endeavors including planetary exploration, environmental, marine and seismic monitoring, medicine, training, entertainment and the military.

Not only will security sensors alert us to the presence of intruders, but environmental sensors will set the temperature and humidity for every room in your home. When you are away on vacation, you can still keep an eye on conditions at home, even alter them from afar if you wish.

MEMS devices the size of individual cells may be able to interrogate biological systems in order to better understand the causes of pathological conditions. They could also aid in the treatment of disease by monitoring physiological responses to drug dosages right where the medication (or other intervention) is applied. Today these levels can only be gauged by gross systemic responses. By continuously monitoring physiological responses, dosages could be controlled to minimize side effects. New drug delivery systems might also be devised to inject substances directly where they are needed, providing more efficient treatment at lower dosages. Devices developed for monitoring human responses may even be spun off into new consumer products which could assist in training athletes and incorporated into new adaptive video games.

Coupling Global Positioning System (GPS) with wireless networks will allow objects to "know" where they are and be able to report their locations. Sensors in children's clothing would allow parents to constantly monitor the child's location. And imagine never losing your keys again!

Just as client applications such as browsers, e-mail programs and stock tickers run on the Internet, client devices will invisibly attach themselves to this wireless network. These cheaply manufactured, single-chip computers will create a tremendous new industry - at least twice the size of the current PC industry, according to Microsoft visionary Gordon Bell.

"Technology can not truly be helpful unless it can provide the information that you need, where you want it, when you want it and without you needing to manage it," says Neil Gershenfeld, co-director of the Things That Think consortium at the MIT Media Lab.

To illustrate his point, Gershenfeld uses the example of a refrigerator equipped with a sensor to detect whether your milk has spoiled. A computer embedded in your shoe would be "aware" of the condition of the milk in your refrigerator. As you passed the store on your way home, the computer would alert you to the need to buy milk. "I don't want to know it when I'm leaving in the morning late for work," Gershenfeld says, "but when I'm walking home and I have time, and a store broadcasts the information that it has milk, that's a good time for the shoe to say, 'By the way, you need milk and they have it there.'"

Even this frivolous example shows how handy it is to have the right piece of information delivered to you at exactly the right time. As magical as this may seem, all it requires is "giving a computer access to the world and letting the simple pieces work together," Gershenfeld says.

Although this example may evoke visions of the comedic spy Maxwell Smart with a phone in his shoe, suppose it was the pilot of a commercial airliner who was receiving the data and instead of needing milk, the information warned of an another plane approaching at several hundred miles per hour.

Mark Weiser, Chief Technologist of Xerox PARC, who coined the term "ubiquitous computing," predicts this application of technology will "become part of the informing environment, like weather, like street sounds." It "will bring other worlds to us in new ways - sometimes in ways so unobtrusive we will not even notice our increased ability for informed action."

Eschewing the notion that the goal of technology is creating a world filled with "smart" devices, Weiser says: "We don't really want things that are smarter - like smart Cappuccino." Instead, he suggests "ubiquitous computing just might help to free our minds from unnecessary work, and ....as we learn to make machines that take care of our unconscious details, we might finally have smarter people."

This will only be possible when those billions of tiny computers start communicating with each other. And this is what wireless network research at the School of Engineering and Applied Science is all about.