Summary: Understanding and Using Context
ANIND K. DEY
Future Computing Environments Group
College of Computing &GVU Center
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA, 30332­0280, USA
Tel: +1­404­894­5103
Fax: +1­404­894­2970
E­mail: anind@cc.gatech.edu
Abstract
Context is a poorly used source of information in our computing environments. As a result, we
have an impoverished understanding of what context is and how it can be used. In this paper, we
provide an operational definition of context and discuss the different ways that context can be used
by context­aware applications. We also present the Context Toolkit, an architecture that supports
the building of these context­aware applications. We discuss the features and abstractions in the
toolkit that make the task of building applications easier. Finally, we introduce a new abstraction, a
situation, which we believe will provide additional support to application designers.

1. Introduction
Humans are quite successful at conveying ideas to each other and reacting

Source: Abowd, Gregory D. - College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences