RIAD LEMHACHHECHE
Writing · Speaking

Ideas in public

The argument in writing, and the rooms where it was made — essays alongside twenty years of conference stages.

3
essays
87
appearances
23
years on stage
01What wearables proved, and what they missed09 Jun 2025 · 6 min · Ubicomp, twenty years on · Part one · 9 sourcesRay-Ban Meta, the Humane AI Pin and Vision Pro are the first honest test bench for a framework written in 2006. Two of its three premises hold. The third one — that invisibility is a design outcome — does not.Read the essay →02Ubicomp at planetary scale18 Jun 2025 · 9 min · Ubicomp, twenty years on · Part two · 10 sourcesWearables tested whether the framework was human-centred. Smartphones and 5G tested whether it scaled. It scaled — and picked up two failure modes that were nowhere in the 2006 text: attention and geolocation.Read the essay →03Privacy, equity, energy: the bills coming due22 Jun 2025 · 8 min · Ubicomp, twenty years on · Part three · 9 sourcesThe technical problems in ubiquitous computing largely got solved. Three others were left on the table, and they are harder because none of them is only technical.Read the essay →