Ubiquitous information and communication networks

The ITU Internet report 2005 is entitled "The Internet of Things".From the executive summary which is now available to download."'We are standing on the brink of a new ubiquitous computing and communication era,one that will radically transform our corporate,community, and personal spheres.Over a decade ago,the late Mark Weiser developed a seminal vision of future technological ubiquity,one in which the increasing “availability” of processing power would be accompanied by its decreasing “visibility”.As he observed, “the most profound technologies are those that disappear…they weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it”.Early forms of ubiquitous information and communication networks are evident in the widespread use of mobile phones:the number of mobile phones worldwide surpassed 2 billion in mid-2005.These little gadgets have become an integral and intimate part of everyday life for many millions of people,even more so than the internet.Today,developments are rapidly under way to take this phenomenon an important step further,by embedding short-range mobile transceivers into a wide array of additional gadgets and everyday items,enabling new forms of communication between people and things,and between things themselves".

Thanks to Smartmobs