Also read the Manifesto (link at top of blog).

I used to call this work the “Creative Peripherals Project”, then the “Desktop Extension Intiative”. Why so clunky? Because though perhaps most apt, the term ‘ambient’ seems so… taken. (see Ambient Inc.) Yet the reason the work I discuss here is so important, and compelling, is that that company both defines and at the same time squanders the potential and the promise of this vast area of exploration. I understand it, of course. That is their business model: the objects drive subscriptions to a proprietary, closed system.

But what if there was an open system for ambient information? What if anyone could create a device to fill an unmet need, or a novel idea? What if anyone could easily write a new behavior for an existing object? What if the system was open, in the sense that information on how it works, how to modify and customize it, how to make hardware and software, was freely available?

That’s the idea behind aiosphere.

Here’s a dated but still relevant paper on Ambient Computing