Computing squared will be basis of next generation IT

Maja Pantic of Imperial College London, Anton Nijholt of the University of Twente, The Netherlands, Alex Pentland, of the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Thomas Huanag of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, make the case in the International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems. “[Computing] needs to be built for humans and based on naturally occurring ways people communicate,” they say. They explain that new computer interfaces will go way beyond the keyboard and mouse, and be able to understand and emulate people as well as recognising behavioural cues, such as body language, facial expressions and tone of voice. The researchers make the point that, so far, computers and the Internet have become so embedded in the daily fabric of people’s lives that they cannot live without them. “[However], these processes shift human activity away from real physical objects, emphasising virtual over physical environments,” they say. The solution: in order to create technology based on the ‘Human-Centred Intelligent Human-Computer Interaction (HCI-squared)’ concept, there has to be a paradigm shift in our approach to computing. “The focus of future research efforts in the field should be primarily on tackling the problem,” the researchers conclude. “This should be treated as one complex problem rather than a number of detached problems in human sensing, context sensing and human behaviour understanding,” they add – stating that only then will we see truly ubiquitous computing.