Proactive Computing
David Tennenhouse’s 2000 article in Communications of the ACM coined the term “proactive computing.” Tennenhouse, then director of research at Intel, argued that computing must shift from reactive to proactive: instead of waiting for human commands, systems should anticipate needs and act autonomously. The central idea is that humans leave the interaction loop entirely, and the machine observes, decides, and acts on their behalf. This paper is the most direct academic articulation of the principle that underlies autonomous agent systems and situation-oriented software. Where Weiser made computing invisible, Tennenhouse made it self-directed.