Week 2

Reading Response: Technology Should Greate Calm

From this week's reading, I'd like to respond to Artful Design Principle 2.6, which states:

Principle 2.6: Technology should create calm.

This principle is also stated at Page 64 by Mark Weiser in his article "The Computer for the 21st Century". As he explains the concept of ubiquitous computing in the following three lines:

• The purpose of a computer is to help you do something else.
• The best computer is a quiet invisible servant; it should extend your unconsciousness.
• Technology should create calm.

I resonate with these principles very much. I'd like to extend them a bit with my own experience.

Since my undergrad years, I have "tinkered" my laptop a lot. It usually starts with a complaint: I don't like this certain part of my system / why can't my system do this? The "awareness" of my computer being an external, esoteric and artificial tool has always been lurking in my mind -- it is not natural. At the same time, I have cultivated a great sense of possessiveness -- this is my laptop, it should comply with my will. Therefore, I spent a lot of time decorating and customizing the system. Soon, Windows 10/11 became too opinionated to bear with, I decided to switch to Linux. Later, I found myself spending more time tinkering all the tools I used than actually doing the real job. I became easily irritated, not by people, but by the "ugliness" of the technology world. I remember on a Saturday, I was glued in front of my laptop from 10am to 7pm, skipping all my meals, only trying to make some apps translucent. At 7pm, I climbed up, went out of my dorm with a drowsy mind, was hit by a strong wind and, suddenly, as I watched the last bit of sunset over the faraway buildings and trees, I was stupefied by the drastic contrast of the artificial world I dwelled in whole day and the physical, real nature outside. I felt lost and empty. This is a brilliant negative case of the spirit of design, as it violates every principle above:

• the purpose of tinkering a laptop has nothing to do with productivity most of the time.
• the desire of possessiveness I have grown made my laptop the pivot of my attention and consciousness. It's too much.
• my tinkering created nothing but irritation and emptiness.

I learned something from my wasting of time: it's not a form of technology itself that improves or harms humanity -- it's the attitude towards it and the ways we use it that determine whether good or bad. This discovery was reinforced and extended after I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. He made a similar expression which I rephrase as follows: it is the deliberate dichotomy of subject and object, mind and substance, rationality and emotion that impedes the current technology from being humanistic. Instead of designing for efficiency, one should design for quality. The latter can only be evaluated and justified by sensations and emotions -- by how it makes humans feel. As I reflected it to my mania of tinkering, I realized that it is rather the impetuous attitude I had towards my laptop that impedes me from enjoying using it. I "craved" the customizability, and I placed a lot of self-ego into this process. At the same time, I constructed this dichotomy between the tool I used and the real work I was facing. Indeed, even as a power user of technology, I failed at remaining calm and peaceful. Perhaps as a designer of technology, one really need to contemplate on how to avoid such traps for the end users.