Reading Everyware

I've started reading Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. I'm around thesis 10, with about 75 to go. So far, we're still in fairly basic territory, and I can't quite tell who the book is aimed at: interaction designers and other professionals, or a more general public?

On one hand, the book's strong on the intellectual history of ubicomp-- almost stronger on the history than you'd expect a book for practitioners to be. But the organization into theses makes it less accessible a read, and more prescriptive.

As usual, Gene Becker beat me to the punch, this time getting the Everyware-Martin Luther comparison out before I could.

The book it also makes clear just how valuable a biography of Mark Weiser, or at least an article that talks about the origins and development of his concept of ubiquitous computing, would be. Weiser keeps showing up in the story, as the Man With the (Original) Plan, the guy who first imagined what a ubicomp world could be like. Another book or two like this, and he'll be the Buddy Holly of computing.

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