Everyware is an umbrella term that Adam coined to capture the unfolding of this fast moving phenomena that many of us are not paying attention. An interesting upshot of this everyware technology is that people are unaware that they are using it. An old example of this is the cell phone, but that has been replaced by new and nifty devices that we use in our everyday life, and we are not even aware of it points out Adam.

Some of them include the touch and go pay system credit card that Chase Bank has introduced in New York; the RFID technology that is used to tag goods, and in some cases used to tag people (some patients have RFID chips embedded in their arm that help doctors get instant access to their medical history and prescription); the instrumented floors used to build houses for senior citizens in South Korea...these are just a few examples of how technology is increasingly meshed into our lifestyle. Adam labels this development as "colonization of everyday life."

And with the coming of the IPV6,, the next generation Internet, Adam thinks that every grain of sand in the world could have an IP address. Every device at that point could have multiple IP addresses. Currently, we are using the older IPV4 technology, where we are running out of IP addresses for these rapidly proliferating devices. The fact that every object in the world could potentially have an IP address is partly what worries Adam.

Through this book Adam wants to create awareness of the unintended consequences of everyware and the impact that it will have in our collective lives. One of the worrying aspects of this development is that all kinds of information can be gathered, tagged, stored and searched for future reference. So, every action of yours persists in some kind of a meta database for a long time. That in turn has him worried about privacy issues, and how that will impact society.

Adam is also worried that the User Interfaces being created for such devices are not-so-friendly and can have unintended consequences. By addressing these issues early on in the debate perhaps some of these issues can be addressed and corrected is Adam's line of reasoning. Adam is in some ways advancing and pushing forward a debate that Howard Rheingold of Smartmobs started a few years ago with the coming of IRC, mobile phones and PDAs. Adam was involved with the first Moblogging Conference that took place in Tokyo in 2003. 

Adam lives with his wife Norri in Manhattan, New York.

web 2.0 Everyware Mobile RFID Usability Podcast Indian Podcast