Title: Calm Technology
Context: Rather than doing more, better, faster perhaps technology should instead take a chill pill once in a while.
Synopsis: We all know what technology is about: speed, ubiquity, efficiency, choice, distractions, confusion, panic! Hold on. Seem to have gone off the rails there a little bit. But technology can be particularly overwhelming at times can it not? Between apps and platforms and notifications and ceaseless, endless, relentless information tech can overpower as much, and as often, as it empowers. This can be detrimental to the psyche. In fact, we have even adopted the word “unplug” as code for escaping our frenetic, techno-centric lives and restoring balance—calm, if you will—so that we can return to a natural state of pre-computing equilibrium. Is this technology’s fault? Does technology exist to simply overcomplicate our lives? No. I rather think the fault lies in our heavy-handed approach to delivering technology to people without regard for the psychological impact it can have. We concentrate on the power of technology to accelerate our lives instead of the much more attractive possibility that it can equally introduce serenity. Technology is agnostic, it is we who wield it to inflict either agitation or equanimity. Let us choose wisely…or perhaps rather; calmly.
Best Bit: “[Xerox PARC Researcher Mark] Weiser believed that [computing systems] would lead to an era of ‘calm technology,’ in which technology, rather than panicking us, would help us focus on the things that were really important to us.”
via calmtech.com
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