History

Calm Technology™ is an effort to expand the awareness of how humans and computers can live in harmony, and how pass-through, robust technologies can help us manage emerging complexities and coordination needs in our homes and the wider world.

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Designer and researcher Amber Case about Mark Weiser's ubiquitous computing work while writing her thesis on smartphones in 2007. This discovery led her to question why these ideas were not more widely known. Starting in 2010, she expanded on the papers by creating the Principles of Calm Technology, and in 2015, an influential book called Calm Technology: Principles and Patterns for Non-Intrusive Design.

Now, the concept of Calm Technology and Case's principles for Calm product design have been widely adopted by companies all over the world, reMarkable, Google, Virgin Global and AirBNB. Calm Technology™ also inspired Kyoto-based Calm Technology startup mui Lab, Inc. 

Amber Case

Amber Case studies the interaction between humans and computers and how technology is changing everyday life.

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Case received the Claude Shannon Innovation Award from Bell

Labs and spent two years as a fellow at MIT’s Center for Civic Media and Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

History of Calm Technology™

The terms “Calm Computing” and “Calm Technology” were coined in 1995 by Mark Weiser in reaction to the increasing complexities that information technologies were creating. He felt that the promise of computing systems was that they might “simplify complexities, not introduce new ones.”1

Weiser believed that this 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.2

It Case's mission to carry on the design philosophy of Calm Technology™ to the next generation. Not only was Weiser ahead of their time, but he wrote about the era of ubiquitous computing we now find ourselves in.​

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Mark Weiser

Mark Weiser was the chief technology officer at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (Parc). He is often referred to as the father of ubiquitous computing. He coined the term in 1988 to describe a future in which invisible computers, embedded in everyday objects, replace PCs. Other research interests included garbage collection, operating systems, and user interface design.

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Weiser wrote or co-wrote over 75 technical publications on such subjects as the psychology of programming, program slicing, operating systems, programming environments, garbage collection, and technological ethics. He was a member of the ACM, IEEE Computer Society, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Weiser passed away in 1999.

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