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January 30, 2006
The Coming Age of Calm Technology
I enjoyed reading this article by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown.
I was quite surprised by the fact that people had such ideas in 1996, when personal computers and networks weren't as available to individuals.
The first sentence of the articles is powerful, "What matters is not technology, but its relationship to us." Technology is only a tool that people use to facilitate their lives. It can not be the core factor in life, nor can it be disruptive to us. So the relationship is something that I've always asked myself about. There are so many peripherals today that we all own. However, I sometimes get all wound up in the whole idea of the cool gadgets and techs and I find myself feeling overburdened by these new technology.
It is important that as artists, engineers and inventors at ITP, we try to embed this idea of "calm technology" into our projects.
I was recently in Korea over the break and learned quite a lot about the new ubiquitous city, in development, the Song Do City, Incheon. It's a city where the whole community will be networked, creating smart homes, appartments and environments that is aware of the human activity. Even today, in Seoul, there are new apparments in the city where the appliances and the utilities within a home is networked. One could use their cell phones to connect into their appartments to check in on the heating, gas leaks and possible burglaries. One could even monitor the humidity and oxygen levels.
"Ubiquitous computing is fundamentally characterized by the connection of things in the world with computation." When this is true, it is essential that the user should have the choice to stay out of all this networking. The user should NOT be overburdened and he should be able to have complete control.
Personally, I find that my cell phone for instance is a form of calm technology. I may choose to leave it on vibrate mode, ignore it and get back to it when I can. However, the email application is not "calm" to me what so ever. Constantly notifying me of the emails that I get that require my attention. I can choose to ignore it, just like I would with my cell phone, but currently being a student, it's my habit that I choose to put emails at a higher priority.
Interesting recent read, Real-time design in the "world as spread-sheet"
Posted by min at January 30, 2006 02:09 PM