This article is published in the April 2014 issue.

Visions 2025: Interacting with the Computers All Around Us


The Visions 2025 initiative is intended to inspire the computing community to envision future trends and opportunities in computing research. Where is the computing field going over the next 10-15 years? What are potential opportunities, disruptive trends, and blind spots? Are there new questions and directions that deserve greater attention by the research community and new investments in computing research?

The first workshop to be held as a part of this series is Interacting with the Computers All Around Us.

social media concept

social media concept

Computers are increasingly ubiquitous, from smart phones and sensors, to wearable electronics and embedded medical devices, to conventional tablets, laptops, and server racks.  In this workshop, we will bring together researchers at the cutting edge of pervasive computing to look beyond the horizon at the technological innovations that could radically change how computers interface with people and the world around them.

In particular, the workshop will cover the growing challenges and promising technological trends in how people will interact with computing around them in efficient, correct and humanly pleasing manners. Many computing devices will be interacting with each other without humans in the loop, thus, the workshop will also explore interactions involving a swarm of machines. Finally, ubiquitous computing will open new frontiers in how people interact and will empower communities to accomplish bigger and more complex tasks.

The workshop will be held May 12-13 in Washington, DC.  For more information, please visit: https://cra.org/ccc/visioning/computing-visions-2025/interacting-with-the-computers-all-around-us.

Additional Computing Visions 2025 workshops will be occurring soon, titled New Renaissance of Indy Manufacturing: Programmable Matter and Things and Computing and the Smart World.