Understanding and Using Context：（理解和使用上下文）.pdfVIP

Understanding and Using Context ANIND K. DEY Future Comp uting Environments Group Colleg e of Comp uting GVU Center Georgia Institute of Technology A tlanta, GA, 30332-0280, USA Tel : +1-404-894-5103 Fax: +1-404-894-2970 E-mail : anind@ Abstract Context is a poorly used source of information in our computing environments. As a result, we have an impoverished understanding of what context is and how it can be used. In this paper, we provide an operational definition of context and discuss the different ways that context can be used by context-aware applications. We also present the Context Toolkit, an architecture that supports the building of these context-aware applications. We discuss the features and abstractions in the toolkit that make the task of building applications easier . Finally, we introduce a new abstraction, a situation, which we believe will provide additional support to application designers. 1. Introduction Humans are quite successful at conveying ideas to each other and reacting appropriately. This is due to many factors: the richness of the language they share, the common understanding of how the world works, and an implicit understanding of everyday situations. When humans talk with humans, they are able to use implicit situational information, or context, to increase the conversational bandwidth. Unfortunately, this ability to convey ideas does not transfer well to humans interacting with computers. In traditional interactive computing, users have an impoverished mechanism for providing input to computers. Consequently, computers are not currently enabled to take full advantage of the context of the human-computer dialogue. By improving the computer ’s access to context, we increase the richness of communication in human-computer interaction and make it possible to produce more useful computational services. In order to use context effectively, we must understand what context is and how it can be used, and