Sentient computing meets social networking
Simon Hay, Joseph Newman and Andrew Rice. Sentient computing meets social networking. W3C Workshop on the Future of Social Networking.
Sentient computing was conceived in 1999 and aims to make applications more responsive and useful by observing and reacting to the physical world . It is particularly attractive in a world of mobile users and computers. In recent years we have observed a convergence between services enabled by ubiquitous computing technologies and applications offered to social networks. The overlap will continue to increase as ‘web-friendly’ handsets flood the market and sensors becomes more commonplace. There has been work published on the social implications of ubiquitous computing, but as the technologies spread out of laboratories and into real-life settings we believe their potential benefit to social networking is worthy of further consideration. Our aim in this position paper is to identify this intersection as a fruitful topic for discussion, provide references to a few examples of relevant research and offer thoughts on lessons learnt and challenges for the future.