Coping with Uncertainty

M. Satyanarayanan. “Coping with Uncertainty,” IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 02, no. 3, p. 2, July-September, 2003.

The Editor in chief’s note of the IEEE Pervasive Computing issue focusing on systems that deal with uncertainty.

M. Satyanarayanan mentions that digital computing allowed us to eliminate uncertainty in state representation and transformation and that it is now ironic that today’s all-digital world, uncertainty reappears as a major concern at a higher level of representation.

Dealing with uncertainty in pervasive environments might be found in subtle system to user and user to system communication. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches seem valid

How does a system strike a happy medium at all times, even when the environment or user context changes?

How verbose should a system be in keeping its user informed about what is going on underneath?

Relation to my thesis: This issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing was one of the first to mention uncertainty. Even with its quantitative approach (Bayesian Filtering for location estimation or modeling the user patience) it acknowledges more qualitative approaches. Good since I plan to mix the two approaches.