Calm Technology

“Calm technology”, born out of mid-nineties research at Xerox PARC, is the notion that technology should blend into the background most of the time and should engage more than our sense of vision when it’s time to get our attention.

Displays can be physical if they don’t need to update quickly. E-ink is an obvious example, but there are more unconventional displays:

• a 1-bit physical pixel display, whose refresh rate
• Berg’s Pixel Track, a previous idea where a small car would run along a track to poke each pixel around. Good for thin signage that wraps around the perimeter of a building.
• Daniel Rozin’s Wooden Mirror, which uses servos to catch the light
• COLORMOTION (Deutsches Technikmuseum), a big boy version using the Vanna White mechanism