All these paradigms are slightly different. All are very interesting. All inform the aiosphere in one way or another.

Here are some resources:

• Wikipedia’s entry on Tangible computing.
• Proceedings from Subtle Technology Symposium 2007.
• William Hazlewood’s paper on design studies for ubicomp interfaces.
• Everyware by Adam Greenfield, the book I’m reading right now.
• Texts date very quickly in this rapidly evolving field, but Ambient Intelligence remains a thoughtful and in-depth analysis of the challenges in the field.
• Pousman and Stasko’s paper on the taxonomy of ambient information systems. A good overview of the complex of related fields.
• An interesting idea: an ambient information soundscape.
• MIT’s Ambient Intelligence Group. Approaches tend to be a bit too complicated, but hey, they’re research. And the aggregate is very inspiring.