BBC futurist, Tom Cheesewright, talks ubiquitous computing and how it is affecting people, places and organisations across the world. This is the speech Tom gave at Daisy Communications' flagship event 'Daisy Wired? 2014'.

1. SMART PEOPLE, SMART PLACES,
SMART ORGANISATIONS
UBIQUITY
By Tom Cheesewright

2. You are all futurists.
I may have made it my job title but no-one gets through life
without thinking about the future.
Whether it is setting the sales targets for the year ahead, or
spending furtive half hours at work booking your summer
holiday, we all plan. We all spend lots of time thinking about
the future.
This presentation will talk about a future that is rushing
towards us, ever faster. A future that only a few years ago
would have been pure fiction, but due to the pace of change is
fast becoming reality.

3. W0
W0W1 W1
W1 W1W2
W2
W2
P
Rambus Inc.
W2
I’m going to start with a physics lesson.
Only joking! It’s not your GCSEs again or O-levels.
This is a diagram showing the operation of a new type of
camera designed by Rambus Inc.
I’d like to show you the camera itself.

4. But there’s not a lot to see because it’s the diameter of just three
human hairs.
It needs no lens. And it costs less than 15 pence to manufacture.
If you think we live in a surveillance culture now, just wait until
this hits the market in two to three years’ time.

5. This camera is just the latest evidence of the unstoppable progress
of technology. Its exponential progress on all fronts: smaller,
faster, cheaper, better.
Digital technology is reaching an important milestone in this
inexorable advance. A point at which it is everywhere, yet almost
invisible.
We call this milestone ubiquity, the point at which the promise of
ubiquitous computing becomes reality.
Today I want to talk about the concept of ubiquity and how it affects
all of our lives at three different scales: personal, organisational
and geographical.
People, companies and places.
UBIQUITY

6. INTERNET • DIGITAL CONTENT • LOW-COST COMPUTING • BIG DATA
SMALLER
CHEAPER
FASTER

7. Let’s put this in historical context. The term ubiquitous computing
was first coined 26 years ago at the home of so many computing
innovations, Xerox PARC.
Here the mouse, the graphical user interface, Ethernet, and the laser
printer were all created. Some of those for Steve Jobs to steal.
Or not. Depending on your version of history.

8. You can start this story all the way back at Manchester’s baby, and
probably before.
The concept of ubiquitous computing has been fleshed out by academics
in the subsequent years, but it’s best understood by plotting the
advance of computers.

9. But for me it began with the ZX Spectrum. This is
mine in its swanky full keyboard case. The Spectrum
was great. But it had its limitations.

10. The user interface wasn’t exactly friendly.
More specifically, it wasn’t very human. In fact it was
alien.
If you wanted to converse with a Spectrum or any other
computer of this era, you had to learn its language. Its
customs.
It wasn’t very portable.
Its only means of
interconnection with
other machines was via
tapes.
The bandwidth of this
connection depended on
whether you chose first
or second class post.

11. The next big
milestone for me
came when I was
issued with one of
these.

12. It was portable. With the
addition of a PCMCIA card
it could be connected to
the Internet.
Wirelessly after a while.
And it had a graphical
user interface. Much more
natural and friendly.

13. Today, we have smartphones.
They’re more powerful.
They’re permanently
connected. And they’re
pocketable.
But most importantly,
they’re more human.
The reason anyone can pick
up a smartphone and use it
in minutes is because all
that power has been put to
good use.
Making it speak our
language. Touches, swipes,
gestures.
We stop
treating the
technology as
a discrete
object. It
becomes part
of us. An
extension of
ourselves.

14. We may not have the
sound effects or the
sharp suits of Steve
Austin, but we are
all bionic now.
I have a terrible
sense of direction
but it doesn’t
matter. Because my
digital prosthetic
can navigate for me.
It makes up for the
weakness of my
memory. My
smartphone is the
reason that I am
usually in the right
place at the right
time.
But my phone does
more than make up
for my deficiencies.
It makes me
superhuman.

15. I have digital
sixth senses called
Twitter, Facebook
and LinkedIn that
keep me aware of
what’s happening in
the world, my home
and work life, in
real time.
I now have a truly
photographic memory.
I can tap the world’s
knowledge in seconds.

16. INTERNET • DIGITAL CONTENT • LOW-COST COMPUTING • BIG DATA
FIXED
DISCRETE
PORTABLE
NETWORKED
PERSONAL
CONNECTED
UBIQUITY
U
We have gone from somewhere computing,
talking an alien language.
To portable computing, using a much
friendlier means of communication.
To anywhere computing. Small devices so
powerful and so human that they have become
an extension of ourselves.
The next natural step is from anywhere
computing to everywhere computing.
Computers disappearing as discrete objects
in their own right. Their power being
distributed into the cloud and into the
everyday objects all around us.

17. At the
personal
scale,
today,
Ubiquity
looks like
this.
Or at least
it does if
you’re a
model…

18. The reality
remains a lot
more dorky.
This is
Google Glass.
All of the
technology of
a smartphone,
condensed
into a pair
of glasses.
You can see
some here
today if you
haven’t had
the chance
yet.
They’re
impressive,
but the
technology’s
not quite
invisible.

19. Kopin Corp.
That’s coming
though. This is me
sporting a prototype
by a company called
Kopin.
OK they’re a bit
Dame Edna but at
least you don’t look
like an extra from
Star Trek.
The display is
tucked away just
here. Behind the
lens and barely
visible to anyone
else.
The camera? Well if
it uses the one I
showed at the start,
it could be just
about anywhere.

20. SMART… PEOPLE
These gadgets represent the most visible steps towards ubiquity
today.
They’re certainly eye-catching. But it’s the impact that they will
have that is much more interesting.
At the personal scale, ubiquitous computing does one clear thing.
It makes us more capable. And capable of doing more.

21. This is one of the
key themes in
technological
progress of the last
few hundred years.
An economist would
explain it as the
substitution of
capital for labour.

22. Historically automating
production has always
spurred economic growth
and created more jobs.
Some people
become very
rich but the
whole of
society
benefits.
The efficiency
of computing
means economic
growth for
some but fewer
jobs over all.

23. We see this trend
writ large in the
headlines today.
Why was there a tube
strike in London
recently? Because
machines were
replacing people.
The same way many
blue collar jobs
were handed over to
robots in the 60s,
70s and 80s, now we
are seeing the
automation of
customer service,
retail, and even
professional
services.

24. 50%
of law firms
with >10 partners
merged
or acquired
in 2013
Law, accountancy, banking and many
professional jobs are being deskilled
and automated.
Traders getting high are being replaced
by high frequency trading algorithms.

25. Bank managers no longer say ‘no’,
the computer says ‘no’.
But it’s important to remember
that not all of this is about
cost.

26. Doing things by digital means is not only orders of magnitude
cheaper, it is often more efficient for the customer.
People chose to buy music from iTunes rather than HMV, not because
the cost was wildly different but because the experience was better.
As many jobs will be transformed or displaced by the way ubiquitous
technology changes the experience, as they will by the impact it has
on cost.

27. ME
CONSULTANT
SPEAKERBLOGGER
FEATURE
WRITER
BROADCASTER
A. There will be lots more people like me. Self-employed.
People who have multiple different facets to their business that
together represent a healthy career. Enabled by technology!
Q. What does
this mean for
us as
professionals?

28. Ubiquitous computing also has
implications for our
interactions with each other.

29. Cloak tracks people’s social network checkins and allows you to avoid
bumping into them.
Your ex. That guy who talks to much. Your inlaws. You can avoid them
all. As long as they use FourSquare.

30. Cloak is the complete opposite
of Tinder.
Are you familiar with Tinder?
If you don’t know, Tinder is a
social network with a very
explicit, real-world purpose.
To help people hook up.
And it is very, very
successful.

31. SMART… PLACES
Ubiquitous computing also changes our interaction with
our environment.

32. Across our homes and cities, technology is changing
the way we operate, making the dumb smart and
displacing even more manual labour.
We have cut
the amount of
manual labour
in the home
by a factor
of thirty in
the last six
decades.

33. The next
frontier is
cutting the
resource we
use. The Nest
smart
thermostat, for
example, learns
my families
patterns of
occupation and
dynamically
sets the
heating
appropriately.
And combined
with advances
in materials we
should be able
to dramatically
cut our carbon
production from
heating and
lighting.

34. AIR QUALITY
TEMPERATURE
NOISE
HUMIDITY
PARKING SPACES
Some of
the most
exciting
work is
happening
at a
larger
scale
though,
making
whole
cities
smart.

35. 20,000 sensors are distributed across the Spanish city of
Santander. On top of buses and taxis, underneath parking
spots, on lampposts and shop fronts, under roads and in
buildings.
These sensors are built with off-the-shelf hardware for very
low cost. The most expensive sensor in the network is around
£100.
They measure traffic, parking spaces, noise, air quality,
temperature, daylight, energy consumption. And they feed it
all back to a central hub where operators and managers can
make smarter decisions about how they run the city.
They can remotely turn off lights that have been left on.
They can tweak heating controls to reduce energy bills.
They only water lawns when they need watering.
Most importantly, the data is being fed back to the citizens
of Santander as well. They can see via street signs, mobile
apps and websites what is going on to really practical
effect, like cutting down the time it takes to find a
parking space.

36. Image of dustbin from Santander
The technology is now so disposable that in Santander they’re even
putting it in bins.
This bin has a simple sensor in it that measure how much rubbish is in
the bin. When, and only when it is full, will it ask to be emptied.
The mayor of Santander expects to save about 25% of his fuel costs for
waste collection trucks by emptying bins only when they are full.

37. ACTION
PEOPLE
DECISIONS
?
COLLECT
SENSORS
DATABASES
ARDUINO
NANOTECH
SMART DUST
XML
JSON
IoT
CONNECT
WIRED
WIRELESS
4G
FIBRE
WHITESPACE
BLUETOOTH
ZIGBEE
PROCESS
SERVERS
SOFTWARE
THE CLOUD
BIG DATA
HADOOP
DATACENTRE
SOCIAL GRAPH
PRESENT
WEB
APPS
UI/UX DESIGN
INFOGRAPHICS
PERSONALISATION
Santander’s smart city project can be described by five
actions. These five actions are relevant to every scale of
technology I am have talked about so far.

38. The first
action is
that of
collecting
data. From
sensors
distributed
around the
person or the
place, or
from
databases
where
information
is already
stored.
This data is
then
transmitted
through the
connection
layer. 3G,
4G,
whitespace,
Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth,
Zigbee – we
have so many
ways to carry
data
available to
us.
The data is
aggregated at
the
processing
layer, where
raw numbers
are
translated
into
information.
But arguably
most
important is
the
presentation
layer. The
point at
which machine
language is
translated
into a form
that human
beings can
understand
and interact
with
intuitively.
For all that
technology is
the heart of
this
presentation
and the
vision that
sits behind
it, people
remain the
most
important
part of this
network. The
ubiquity
model is
built with
people at its
core.

39. PRESENT
PROCESS
CONNECT
ACTION
COLLECT
I orient the
diagram like
this. Concentric
layers of
technology that
surround the
human, but also
abstract them
from complexity.
What you or I see
at the centre, as
citizen, customer
or controller, is
the information
we need and the
levers we need to
act on it.
Tailored,
personal,
relevant.

40. MI5
GCHQ
BT/VIRGIN
GOV
CCTV
Of course
which people
you put at
the core of
this model
has a great
bearing on
whether it’s
a positive
model or
not.
This version
is pretty
dystopian.
No-one’s
doubting the
risks here.
But the
opportunitie
s are
immense.

41. CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
LOCAL GOVERNMENT NHS
PCTCARE EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT
CP SCH WM HOSP
GP
YOU ME YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU
HOUSING
HA
YOU
Take local government.
Like all councils they need to save money, slashing tens of millions
from their budget, cutting huge swathes of the workforce.
These organisations are populated from top to bottom with people who
actually care about the work that they do. They are being forced to
cut costs but they want to do it with the minimum negative impact on
services.
In fact, they want to try to improve services. Today these
organisations and those around them look something like this – very
simplified.

42. Government and public sector services are very hierarchical. They
are organised from the top down.
The council has
peers and suppliers
– other
organisations
providing services
to the end user.
There is very little
connection between
the services the
council provides,
let alone between
those provided by
the council’s peers.
Customers must
interface with each
of the different
services
individually.

43. Imagine if all of the services
were connected. If all the data
that were relevant to me were
indexed and processed and
presented to me in a way that was
meaningful and useful. Perhaps
with contextual software that
could guide me through decisions.
This is the
vision we have
for the councils
I’m working with.
And the key point
about it is that
it is not
structured around
hierarchies, or
management, or
government.

44. ME
It is structured
around the
individual.
It is ubiquitous
technology that
makes this
possible.

45. SMART…
ORGANISATIONS
Ubiquity has changed the conversation about the
structure of organisations and presented a third way.

46. INTEGRATED
OUTSOURCED
Whereas in the past trends have swung
from the highly integrated to the
highly outsourced, we’re now settling
on a new model.
What I call stratification

47. .CO.UK
MARKETPLACE
AWS
YOU
LOGISTICS
There are some very
high profile examples
of this model. Amazon
is possibly prime
amongst them.
Most of the time we
as consumers
experience Amazon
only through its
presentation layer.
The .com or .co.uk
websites.

48. .CO.UK
MARKETPLACE
AWS
YOU
LOGISTICS
But sitting
underneath that
layer is its
marketplace
technology that
allows any one –
not just Amazon –
to present products
to prospective
purchasers in a
variety of ways.
Amazon doesn’t lock
other retailers out
of its retail
platform. It allows
them to make use of
its design and
marketing
investments to find
an audience.

49. Sitting underneath the marketplace is Amazon’s technology
platform, AWS. It’s the same technology that Amazon uses but
because it is so highly optimised, Amazon can afford to let
other people use it - for a fee.
Amazon’s own interests and those of its customers and
competitors sit side by side. This is where the ugly phrase
co-petition comes from.
Amazon also has a very effective logistics organisation,
partly outsourced but very automated. How long before it opens
this up to third parties as well?

50. PRESENT
PROCESS
CONNECT
ACTION
COLLECT
Smart organisations
like Amazon are
flexible, agile and
efficient. They
achieve this agility
in the way they are
designed.
As a collection of
loosely coupled
components with open
interfaces between
them.
In organisations
it is the
interfaces
between these
layers that I
think provide
the most
interest.

51. These interfaces are what allow these organisations to operate efficiently and
transparently, and to take advantage of opportunities quickly – even when those
opportunities come from outside the organisation.
By encapsulating different functions within the organisation into units you get
some of the advantages that have been implicit in outsourcing: i.e. transparency.
You can see and measure the inputs and outputs and understand performance at a
very granular level.

52. Perhaps more importantly, exposing these interfaces to other companies allows
those companies to see components of your organisation as Lego bricks with which
they can build their own innovations.
When you have clearly defined units with open interfaces, you can not only
reconfigure your own organisation quickly, other people will put you into their
innovations exposing you to new growth markets with limited risk.
Creating these interfaces and making them robust is challenging. But it wouldn’t
be possible at all without the ubiquitous availability of computing power and
connectivity.

53. CURATION
CREATION
COMMUNICATION
RAPIDITY
RELIABILITY
REPETITION
What these interfaces also do is lay bare the separation between man
and machine in the workplace. This will be a major topic of debate in
the coming years as more and more jobs are mechanised.

54. But if we are to
succeed the
debate cannot be
about man OR
machine. It must
be about how we
best work
together.
It’s years since
a machine first
beat a human
being at chess.
But a human
being and a
computer working
together remain
unbeatable by
man or machine
working alone.

55. We have to recognise the
strengths on each side and
configure our organisations
and our education system
around them.

56. UBIQUITY
PRESENT
PROCESS
CONNECT
ACTION
COLLECT
That neat return to ubiquity at the human scale brings me almost to the end.
I believe that for people, living in a developed economy, over the next twenty
years, the biggest driver of change will be technology.
We will see that change at every scale: on our person, in our homes and cities,
and in our places of work and the organisations that govern and support us.

57. “THE BEST WAY TO PREDICT
THE FUTURE IS TO INVENT IT.”
ALAN KAY
IMAGE BY CARL GODWIN HTTP://WWW.BOOKOFTHEFUTURE.CO.UK
I hope this presentation spurs you all to go
and invent a new future, for themselves and
their organisations.