From Technological Determinism to Calm Technology

IML 101: The Languages of New Media

Technological Determinism

We should note the force, effect and consequences of inventions which are nowhere more conspicuous than those three which were unknown to the ancients, namely, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world.

–Francis Bacon

Inventions themselves are not revolutions; neither are they the cause of revolutions. Their powers for change lie in the hands of those who have the imagination and insight to see that the new invention has offered them new liberties of action, that old constraints have been removed, that their political will, or their sheer greed, are no longer frustrated, and that they can act in new ways.

-Colin Cherry, "The Telephone System: Creator of Mobility and Social Change”

The important waves of technological change are those that fundamentally alter the place of technology in our lives. What matters is not technology itself, but its relationship to us.

-Marc Weiser & John Seely Brown, "The Coming Age of Calm Technology” (1995)

Calm Technology:

Mainframe - many people share a computer

Personal computer - one computer, one person

Internet - Distributed Computing

. . . transition to . . .

Ubiquitous computing - many computers share each of us

Calm Technology:

Facilitates our ability to process peripheral information

Allows us to focus on centered technologies

Enables smooth transitions between center and periphery

Calm Technology

Calm Technology