Three major technology areas that the authors envision coming together in the next five to ten years are discussed in this paper. These areas are: immersive telepresence, which includes email applications, but introduces new applications of virtual reality; universal mobile telecommunications systems, or beyond third generation (B3G) applications, including not only cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), but also personal sensors and interfaces; and, finally, ambient intelligence (AmI), which covers pervasive diffusion in the space around us, including such as ideas as smart dust, smart paint, and smart antennas, among others.

The authors outline the link between technology and human factors. However, despite pointing to significant recent research in the latter arena, the paper does little to articulate the human factors issues that will increasingly need to be faced before wider acceptance of these merging fields will occur.

Contained in the paper are an excellent diagram and discussion of the five concentric layers of interface, from body area networks (BAN), through local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), and the cyberworld (interaction among synthetic agents). This is one of the most helpful parts of the paper, along with a useful bibliography, and an excellent appendix highlighting some of the global research efforts on related topics.

The grammar and sentence structure of the paper is somewhat rough and difficult to follow in a few places, but these are not major stumbling blocks. There is almost no attempt to include a conclusion or summary, but the value of the paper is in its overview of recent research efforts, and in the authors hypothesizing on how they might come together. There is very little discussion of the human factors work that will be required to bring these technologies to fruition, of the speed of adoption, or of how societies will be able to afford or be interested in these intrusive technologies.

The research areas proposed and illustrated are certainly informative, if not comprehensive. Human factors issues will need more attention in any future development and discussion.