Ubiquitous Utopia

Abstract

Ubiquity is the anthropological concept that emerges transforming its traditional meaning. This change in the meaning of the word is determined by a metropolitan subject (in the extended sense) who is everywhere inserted in the flows of digital communication and so lives the constant experience in which the classical space/time coordinates are mixed and transformed. The result is an acceleration of the ubiquitous identities that presents itself as one of the most complex events of the new millennium which must be analyzed according to an undisciplined ethnography. The researcher who anticipated the theoretical process about ubiquitous computing was Mark Weiser [1]. In 1988, he wrote that ubiquities characterize space/time relations in digital communication, stressing that such emerging digital ubiquity involves both humans and not-human. The traditional dichotomic paradigm about human and not-human thanks to internet-of-things or the smart commodities – is going to melt in the air of pixel. “Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives” [1].