People-centric communication is the next big step for mobile computing. Whereas existing mechanisms have addressed mobility in the network, none has fully addressed the issue of providing mobility support to people, who are the ultimate and most important endpoints of communication.
We propose an architecture called the Mobile People Architecture (MPA), which provides support for instant and convenient communication between people, as they move from place to place and make use of multiple heterogeneous communication devices, including laptops, PDAs, or cellular phones. MPA makes it possible for people to protect their location privacy and for application designers to facilitate the deployment of their applications within this framework. We identify the key components within this architecture and their corresponding functionalities. Finally, we illustrate a potential prototype design of the system.
People cannot be the outsiders in the communication landscape any longer. We firmly believe that with the help of the mobile computing research community, this challenge will be met.