Review: “Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing” by Adam Greenfield

First of all, I have to confess that it took me six weeks to get through this one. Significant, that, given that the subject matter is right up my digital alley.

“Everyware”, as described by the author, is literally the seeding of the world we live in with computers that are, well, everywhere—built into the devices we use daily, from our coffee cups to our refrigerators to our pets. Appliances, we are told, will communicate with one another, billing will be automatic, our needs will be fulfilled and even anticipated by an intelligent organized web of 1’s and 0’s.

Yes, this is one of those books which informs us that soon, like it or not, our very clothing will be monitoring us, and maybe communicating personal facts to the world at large.

Good thing I’m a naturist.

If some of this seems familiar, it may be because we’ve already started down the path. Consider the act, commonplace already, of using a cell phone to snap a shot of a real estate sign. within moments, if the sign contains an appropriate bar code, you can be taking a virtual tour of the property in question. A mere five years ago, this might have sounded more like something out of “Star Trek”.

And that is the whole point of the book: that the traditional concept of computer as PC is fast coming to an end, following its ancestors (the mainframe and the mini-computer) into relative obsolescence. Next up: tablets, readers, and ingrained processors.

    Greenfield makes no claim that all of this will happen tomorrow. Indeed, many of his book’s theses (instead of chapters) outline some of what prevents it: “The necessary network infrastructure does not exist’’; “Appropriate design documents and conventions do not yet exist”; etc. Perhaps most important of all: “As yet, everywhere offers the user no compelling and clearly stated value proposition”.

There are cautions here as well, some dealing with the continued erosion of privacy which everywhere might aggravate: “What if every fact about which we generally try to dissemble, in our crafting of a mask to show the world, was instead made readily and transparently available? ... who you’ve chosen to befriend in your life, say, or what kinds of intimacy you choose to share with them, but not others.” Clearly, everyware is about more than a countertop that displays traffic reports. “It brings along with it the certainty that if a fact once enters the grid—any fact, of any sort, from your Aunt Helga’s blood pressure at noon last Sunday to the way you currently feel about your most recent ex-boyfriend—it will acquire a strange kind of immortality.”

There are observations of how some countries—like Japan—are less likely to embrace the Internet than they are the mobile web. One wonders, then, if the near future in North America will look a bit like the orient today. (I can remember wondering the same thing back in 1999 in Hong Kong, where I first saw widespread sales of flat screen TVs.)

If the book has one major shortcoming—for this reader, anyways—it’s the overwrought use of the English language. Occasionally, it’s almost Victorian: “The discourse of seamlessness effaces or elides meaningful distinctions between systems.” Um, sure... of course it does. The pink ones, especially. I mean, I do realize that I’m not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but sheesh...

All in all, however, not a bad collection of essays for the reader searching for hints of the possible future.