Toward pervasive information systems

Joel Birnbaum, Senior Vice-President for Research and Development, Hewlett-Packard, hopes for the arrival of pervasive information systems in the future. For information technology, now nearing the end of the third stage, to become truly pervasive it must transcend being merely manufacturable and commonplace. It must become intuitively accessible to ordinary people and must deliver sufficient value to justify the large investment needed in the supporting infrastructure. The future pervasive devices will offer a means to a particular end, and their usage will seem quite natural to a great many people. Dedicated to a particular task, they will be named by that task and users will think of them in terms of what they do, not how they do it. Much new technology will be needed, mostly middleware to address issues of scale, interoperability, security, robustness, and end-to-end systems management.