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gentle tech

What it (exactly) is I don’t know yet.

Some attributes that I think gentle tech should have:

  • Calm: Clear usage, even if the instrument/technology is complex.
  • Pleasant: Using the technology should be a joy.
  • Honest: No dark patterns, hidden agendas, or abstract monetization schemes.
  • Green: Low environmental impact or even positive/regenerative environmental properties.

Other ideas for names

  • Cozy Tech
  • Pleasant Tech
  • Delightful Technology

References

Here I collect concepts that are similar (or maybe even nail it?) to what I want to capture with gentle tech.

Permacomputing: As far as I can tell permacomputing is so far mainly a nice essay that lays out a vision by the amazing viznut. Said essay is, however, a good direction/metaphor. Here is how it starts:

Over the last few hundred years of human civilization, there has been a dramatic increase in the consumption of artificially produced energy. In the overarching story, this is often equated with “progress”.

In the computer world, this phenomenon gets multiplied by itself: “progress” facilitates ever greater densities of data storage and digital logic, thus dramatically exploding the availability of computing resources. However, the abundance has also caused an equivalent explosion in wastefulness, which shows in things like mindblowingly ridiculous hardware requirements for even quite trivial tasks. Ville-Matias Heikkilä

Calm Technology: The terms “calm computing” and “calm technology” were coined in 1995 by PARC Researchers Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown in reaction to the increasing complexities that information technologies were creating. They felt that the promise of computing systems was that they might “simplify complexities, not introduce new ones.

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. Amber Case, 2014

There is a website, a book and a talk.

Examples

Ideas/Concepts that are related, but perhaps less so.

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