Untitled CONCLUSION

Undeniably we have adopted a technologically mediated way of living. This has come to such a degree that technology pervades every aspect of our lives. It is perhaps because we are becoming more and more reliant on technology that we are coming to appreciate that traditional interfaces underexploit the processing potential of both the user and technology. In essence this occurs because of a bottleneck in the link between thinking what we want to happen, and laboriously pursuing those actions. Indeed, the fundamental issue can be viewed as two powerful information processors (human and machine) attempting to communicate with each other via a narrow bandwidth, highly constrained interface. Given this, it is unsurprising that the concept of AmI is so appealing – shift the onus onto the technology to know what we want and when we want it rather than us needing to use the technology as a tool to pursue it. Indeed maybe even allow the environment to make decisions for us, or offer us services that perhaps we did not even know we wanted.

The technical issues relating to the actual implementation and thus realisation of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) environments are immense, and in most cases tangible solutions to technical related problems are still yet to be found. This situation leads to some interesting points of debate on technical, legal and wider societal levels. The concept of AmI is largely based on the idea that by augmenting an environment with sensor technologies and by providing near unlimited storage and processing capabilities, the intentions, needs and desires of people can be predicted and catered for. The result is that people will not need to know how to operate complex technologies – instead the technology will interact with them in intelligent and intuitive ways. Clearly collating information is the key. However, if an environment is to know what a person wants or needs without being explicitly told, then this information needs to come from indirect means – i.e. the technology, or rather the environment as a whole becomes less interactive, and more proactive. Through varying levels of sensor data gleaned from pervasively embedded sensors, dynamic autonomic profiles can be drawn to enable this proactive ability. Intuitively these profiles can only be as good as the data that feeds them, and the processing available to create them, and hence the focus of development is to extract as much data as possible from all aspects of the users and their interactions within an AmI space, as well as developing the underlying infrastructure through which this data can be ‘mined’ for new information. ‘Emerging Technologies’ has become a term which considers the convergence of areas such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, cognitive science, robotics, and artificial intelligence. As discussed here, such technologies which stem from this idea of domain fusion can be considered appropriate in the fabric of an AmI environment, meaning that AmI may actually be an application area made possible through this new emerging technology phenomenon. However, as with all technology, there is clearly a price to pay. Such capabilities come at a cost to our privacy and can clearly start to ebb away our fundamental human rights.

This deliverable is not about finding firm answers to specific questions - indeed to a large extent it would be too presumptuous to do so. Instead it aims to inform the reader and most importantly to stimulate further discussion on both the specific and broader issues that such development entails. In essence, there are more questions posed than answers given. However, perhaps the most important point is: who is going to address the questions raised here, when, and how?