Enabling people "to do more by doing less," that is, to accomplish more with less work. Bringing abundant computation and communication, as pervasive and free as air, naturally into people's live Project Oxygen

The desktop computer is too much the center of attention in the current information world. Simply put, people waste too much time figuring out how to get the computer to perform the desired task, sometimes leaving them with insufficient time to devote to the information task itself.

The best technologies are transparent to the user. Consider, for example, the typical pen or pencil. For most people, writing has become an automatic motor task allowing the writer to devote total attention to "What to write" -- not "How to form the letters". This transparency is the result of two factors. First, the technology itself remains sufficiently stable and unobtrusive to permit mastery, and second, our culture creates the expectation that all children will devote the time needed to write fluently.

In the computer world, few people develop comparable proficiency. This is due in large part to deficiencies in the design of today's desktop computers. Today's computers crash too frequently, the user interface is too complex and unpredictable. Worse yet, some attempts at user-friendliness are actually counterproductive!

Some promising projects:

• Carnegie Mellon Project Aura seeks to design "distraction free ubiquitous computing".
• MIT Project Oxygen seeks to design an information world that is as pervasive and transparent as the oxygen we all breathe.
• U. Washington Portolano Project seeks to create invisible computing -- an environment where computers blend into the environment and require no explicit knowledge to operate.