Читать книгу Digital Marketing - Annmarie Hanlon - Страница 17

The term ‘ubiquitous computing’ was originally coined by Mark Weiser, who was head of the Computer Science Laboratory at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) when writing in Scientific American in 1991 (Weiser, 1991). At that time Weiser commented that in the future there would be computers everywhere and we would not notice their presence; they would just be there.

Some decades later, we have computers at home and with us at university; they are embedded in our mobiles, wearables, in cars, in outdoor billboards – everywhere. We have reached Weiser's vision that computers are integrated ‘seamlessly into the world at large’ (p. 94).

One of the reasons for these trends and the change in the digital landscape is due to the acceleration in the adoption of new technologies. It took more than 50 years for over 50% of US households to adopt telephones (imagine life with no phone!), nearly 20 years to adopt home computers, yet it took less than 10 years for the same group to adopt smartphones.

In a pre-digital age, you booked a holiday by visiting the travel agents on the high street. It was only on arrival at your holiday destination that you saw what the hotel really looked like. Today you will go online, read reviews, see ‘traveller photos’ or holiday snaps others have shared and ask questions of people who have actually visited the destination ‘IRL’ (= in real life).