Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Mike Liebhold is a senior researcher at the Institute for the Future,
focusing on the mobile and abundant computation, immersive media,
and geospatial Web foundations for context-aware and ubiquitous
computing. Previously, Mike was a visiting researcher at Intel Labs,
working on a pattern language based on semantic Web frameworks for
ubiquitous computing. Before that, during the late 1990s, Mike worked
on start-ups building large-scale international public IT services and IP
networks for rural and remote regions and for GPS-enhanced precision
agriculture, a complete IT architecture for schools in Shandong Province,
China, and satellite networks in India, Europe, and Latin America. He was the principal investigator
for a National Science Foundation project to bring Internet2 broadband IP networks to 70 rural
low-income communities in the United States.
Mike is a frequent speaker on the topic of the geospatial Web and has authored a number of papers,
including one recently published in a special edition of the IEEE
Journal on Pervasive Computing,
“Data
Management in the World-Wide Sensor Web.”
You've said the Apple iPhone represents one of the most important inflection points in
the history of technology. What makes the iPhone so significant?
I've been working in technology since 1977. My iPhone is the most profoundly impressive device that
I've ever been around. What it represents is a mobile computer that everyone can afford. It's a device
that can compute. It can give you Web access to all kinds of media information. It's a global library.
And that's the way to think about the Web—as a global library for humanity. It supports rich video
and audio, so you can actually imagine a spoken interactive interface to the global library that would
let you gain access to information without being literate. It has position sensing. The device knows
where it is, so very precise contextual information can become available to people.
Our forecast is that between 2015 and 2020 every human on Earth will be able to afford a device that's
equivalent to an iPhone. Now that's not to say that the cost of network and data connectivity is going to
drop commensurately, but over time there will be improved and lower-cost networks for every human
on Earth. And so I think we're at the dawning of a new wave of global literacy and connectivity.
In your answer you alluded to computers being able to provide information to people
based on their location. How is geographical information being introduced into the Web?
The geospatial Web has four components. The first is Web information that is identified by URL and
its location: by latitude and longitude and increasingly by elevation. We now have Web standards that
allow you to publish a piece of information by location that's viewable in a variety of Web browsers.
The second component is a collection of Web-enabled maps of many varieties. Environmental maps,
infrastructure maps, commercial maps, historical maps, cultural maps—many types of free and mal-
leable maps are coming online. When I say malleable, I mean you can import the data that work with
the map. The third component is real-time sensor data, such as temperature data, humidity data, and
video feeds from cameras. Finally, the component of the geospatial Web that's not quite here yet is
embedded information. I've seen a computer chip that's as tiny as a mote of dust that has a CPU, a
memory and a radio. There's a group at Carnegie Mellon that has made a Web server that's about as
big as your fingernail on your little finger. So you can begin to imagine the physical things and physical
places that are going to incorporate data.
