#calmtech

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Calm Tech Under Fire: Why Invisible Tech Needs Visible Accountability

A deep dive into the hidden risks of calm technology and why passive tech experiences aren’t always user-friendly.

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How I built a pedal powered washing machine

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Anxious computing

Do you remember calm technology? A calmer version of ubiquitous computing, where technology would make use of, and, according to its own definition, enhance, your periphery. Tech that would stay in the background until it was required – and only when it was required, gently attract your attention. Remember that?

I liked the idea, but calm technology itself attracted my attention when I was working closely with people who were experimenting with IoT. The Internet of Things. At the time, bits of its of plastic or wood with the internet in them, powered perhaps by an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. What that usually meant was feeding data into a physical object and getting that object to react in some way when the data changed. Maybe a light would go on, something would print out, a needle would move, a colour would change.

Ideally seeing the change would help you know or understand something. The knowledge would reassure you, or perhaps the physical manifestation of this digital data would delight you. Sometimes the aim was just a moment of whimsy or novelty. If this new knowledge brought the need for action, that action would usually be taken elsewhere, when you could get to the right device.

It was all quite nice. The stakes were low. It was easy to understand the ‘calm’ in calm technology.

I think we’ve all trained ourselves out of that now. If we’ve learnt or enjoyed something and nobody knows, have we really done it?

We need to fave it, like it, give it a thumbs up, retweet it, share it, disagree with it, add to it, post it, trash it, comment on it, save it, mark it as read or unread.

If it’s digital data, simply being aware of it isn’t enough. Knowledge might be power but knowledge without agency is worse than nothing at all. It renders us knowingly powerless. Maybe this is why ignorance is bliss?

For roughly 4 years I worked remotely, from home. Most of my meetings were conference calls. Now I’m back in face to face meetings with people wearing Apple watches. I kind of thought, probably wrongly, that an Apple Watch was a bit of calm technology. Something in your peripheral vision that would just ping you when you needed to know something so you wouldn’t need to keep checking for updates. 

What actually seems to happen after a notification is a quick glance followed by a casual look away while trying to process what you’ve seen. Then maybe a second glance - did it really say that? If it did, there’s a third glance and press, followed by a longer casual glance that turns into deeper focus and ultimately mental withdrawal from the meeting.

Maybe it qualifies as ‘calm computing’ because it’s in your peripheral vision, and only attracts your attention when it’s needed, but it doesn’t look like calm to me.

I work for an energy company. We, like every energy company in the UK, are required to roll out smart meters to our members. Smart meters come with an in-home display. A small screen, always on, that tells you in kilowatts, pounds and pence how much energy you’re using. The idea is that you keep it somewhere you can easily glance at it, to make sense of the money you spend on your energy. You can see how much energy different appliances are using and make decisions based on that. Wikipedia cites smart homes as calm tech, so that probably covers in-home displays connected to smart meters too.

It’s interesting listening to feedback on these displays. Some find it useful and have made real savings. Others find it increases their anxiety. They keep looking at it and seeing their money draining slowly away. They’ve done all they can, turned off everything they can, but still the money goes. There’s that calm technology, in your peripheral vision. Accusing you. All the information and none of the ability to make things better. People lock the screens in the drawer. Not so calm after all.

But there’s more. I think people’s ‘periphery’ is also decreasing. The last part of my commute is a walk from London Bridge station, across the bridge itself and into the city.

I don’t like wearing headphones when I travel. I know I'm the odd one out. I genuinely enjoy being present in the world, and I enjoy the human micro-interactions that being present affords. I know others don’t and I understand that. But what this means in reality is a huge swathe of people with headphones, many continuing to watch Game of Thrones or Line of Duty on their phones as they can’t quite get through a whole episode on the train. Others on WhatsApp or Facebook. All walking slowly with no understanding of their proximity to others, no sense of who’s trying to get past or who’s about to bump into them with coffee. You wait in a queue, stand in a lift, get on the bus, everyone’s physically present but not really there. Each with a narrow focus that’s hard to break if its the periphery you’re aiming for. People in cities are often described as unfriendly, self absorbed, anti-human-interaction, so perhaps it’s always been this way, but I don’t think so. Not quite like this.

Maybe calm computing still has value, but we have new design challenges now the stakes are higher. New peripheries, new proximities, new ways to get attention at the right time. But also finding a way to provide people with the means to take action when they need to. To be fair, if you’ve got a smart home that’s telling you it’s on fire, simply knowing that probably isn’t enough.