Contextual computing will be a key area of the computing future that will be integrating millions and billions of data, connections and data relationships. The future has already started with more and more technology and marketing companies using the contextual computing approach.
There are at least four different graphs that should be integrated for contextual computing.
A Social Graph is All About the Connections
The data set in a social graph reveals the nature and emotional relevance of a user and other people that he/she is connected with. It is about how different people are connected to each another and how they are similar to each other.
A social graph takes into consideration factors such as shared friends and comparable friendships at the same location to bring people together that very potentially like each other.
An Interest Graph is All About the Likes
The data set in an interest graph reveals the user’s preferences and likes. They are mainly organized around what tends to correlate with each another and what overlaps regarding preferences and likes between individual users.
Though already used, the concept of interest graphs is still in development but will be significantly impact contextual computing of tomorrow.
A Behavior Graph is All About the Things to Do
The data set in a behavior graph reveals what a user really does instead of what he asserts to do based on what is measured by different sensors or self-reporting tools.
This data may be in fundamental contrast to the interest graph, allowing computers to understand how likely the user will show distinct behavior such as keeping a diet plan.
Currently, Google Search, Netflix and Amazon recommendations, FourSquare and several fitness and food tracking applications use behavior greaph for real insight.
A Personal Graph is All About the Beliefs
The data set in a personal graph reveals the beliefs, principles, core values and personality that makes somebody unique.
Understanding the concepts necessary to document such information in a computable form is still difficult. It will be only slowly emerging around methods that are scraping intimate files for data.
Future Outlook
It is projected that contextual computing, which integrates even more than the above mentioned graphs will bloom within the next decade.
Contextual computing will act as wearable intelligence that opens up new ways to make decisions based on who we are, what we believe and like and what we actually do.
http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/reports/context-aware-computing-2010.jsp
