Chapter 02: Calm

The Periphery Is Sacred

In 1995, two researchers at Xerox PARC hung an eight-foot string from the ceiling and connected it to a small motor wired into the Ethernet cable.

When network traffic flowed, the string twitched. Busy network, wild dance. Quiet network, gentle sway. People in the room could feel the pulse of the building's digital life without looking at a single screen.

Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown called this calm technology. Technology that informs without demanding. I want to show you what that feels like — and what its opposite feels like.