Anthropology Meets Ubiquitous Technology in the UBI Program

The UBI Program, coordinated by MediaTeam Oulu research group of the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering of the University of Oulu, extends into anthropology in the beginning of the year 2010. Academy of Finland has granted funding for UBI Anthropos project of the subject of Cultural Anthropology of the University of Oulu. The funding was granted for the years 2010-2012.

The director of the project is Professor of Cultural Anthropology, PhD Taina Kinnunen. UBI Anthropos is participating in creating a user-friendly ubiquitous city. The project studies the ways different people adopt and use new ubiquitous information technology, such as the UBI HotSpots and versatile sensor networks installed into the city centre of Oulu. The project also studies the attitudes the citizens and occasional visitors have towards the new technology and what kind of values and expectations they associate with it. The project also looks into how the users’ age, gender, education, employment and place of residence affect their opportunities and needs to use and utilize ubiquitous technology.

In addition to the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering and the subject of Cultural Anthropology, the Department of Architecture, the Department of Marketing, the Department of Information Processing Science and Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC) of the University of Oulu are involved in the UBI Program, as well. The UBI Program represents the multidisciplinary research which has been written into the strategy of the University of Oulu.