Computer scientists are coming up with clever new ways to turn the cell phone of the near future into an environmental monitoring system that can tell if you're getting enough exercise, and if you could do just a little more to help make this planet more user-friendly. Someday soon, a cell phone could even let you know if grandma, who is suffering from early Alzheimer's, has wandered away from home, or left a boiling stew on the stove. It's happening now because scientists finally have a computer that can sense and interact with the particular environment we are in, at any moment, day in and day out.
"The primary interesting use of computing in the future is going to be the cell phone," said James A. Landay, associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. "The last two or three years has finally seen phones that have enough computation to do something beyond just small applications."
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