A few observations on the idea of calm technology. According to Weiser’s definition, a calm technology is a technology that can move back and forth between the center and the periphery of our attention. The first crucial aspect of such technology is its capacity to disappear in the periphery, where it can be “informing without overburdening”. Technology’s capacity to withdraw in the periphery, however, is not per se sufficient to ensure calmness: this withdrawal could, in principle, be perceived as threateningly elusive and become a source of anxiety if we had the feeling that, by withdrawing, the technology was actually evading our control. So this is where the second crucial feature of calm technology (i.e. the ease with which it can be repositioned at the center of our attention), comes into the picture.
What is not entirely clear to me, however, is how this back-and-forth movement of attention is actually supposed to work, and who is directing it. Weiser’s original formulation (see his definition of calm technology as one that “moves back and forth” between the center and the periphery of our attention) seems almost to suggest that the movement is directed by the technology itself, as if it was up to IT (the technology I mean) to establish when the user’s attention needs to be redirected. This impression is reinforced by Weiser’s reference to the way in which, while driving a car, we are led to redirect our attention to the engine’s noise (normally almost unperceived) as soon as we hear something peculiar. Even though a funny noise in the engine is not exactly ‘meant’ as a warning sign, the point is that in this case it’s the technological apparatus itself (the car) that calls attention to an otherwise peripheral detail. This self-monitoring function is even more evident in other technologies; sticking to the car example, think of the many little lights that turn on to tell us that we’re running out of gas, that we didn’t fasten our seatbelt, etc. These are rather harmless examples, but in general I find it quite worrying to think that the redirection of attention may be deferred to the technological apparatus itself. True, we can always redirect our attention if we want: it is not as if the technology literally disappears when our attention is not centered on it. Nonetheless, I feel somehow uneasy about the idea of a ubiquitous technological presence explicitly designed to go unnoticed. To my mind it evokes ghosts of subliminal advertisement, and worse.
At the same time, in some of the other examples quoted by Weiser it seems that the redirection of attention from the periphery to the center is guided by the users. This seems to be the case both with the Dangling String and with the Inner Office Windows. The example of the inner widows, however, seems to me to raise a different set of concerns. In this case, the technology implies multiple users and, while it affords to the person working at an office desk the possibility to look outside whenever she or he wants, it also allows people outside the office to look inside whenever they want. Doesn’t that sound very much like panopticism (except, of course, that here one would actually know when one is being watched)? Weiser contrasts the glass window set-up with the open office plan in which desks are separated only by low partitions. But what about individual offices with simple doors, doors that can be propped open when one feels like it, but can also be closed? Sure, we could put blinds on our office window – but wouldn’t that be perceived as a very pointed act? And if the windows came with blinds in the first place, what would be the difference between them and a simple door?
