Ubiquitous Computing for Business: Find New Markets, Create Better Businesses, and Reach Customers Around The World 24-7-365

1. Introduction: Reading the Waves

It’s often hard to notice a sea change until it washes over you. You know one is coming—it’s happened before—but it creeps up slowly and is hard to pay attention to. We see this effect often in information technologies: the web, personal computers, three-dimensional graphics, digital media, virtual worlds, smartphones, social computing, and more. We call such technologies “disruptive” because they seem to come from nowhere to wash over the established leaders.

For the most part, though, we could have seen any of them coming. Each had made a preceding beachhead: hypertext, workstations, animated sprites, cassette tape recorders, text-based multiuser domains, citizens’ band (CB) radio, bulletin board services, ...