Being Calm, in a World that has Panicked

TED
Amber Case
Calm Technology: Principles and Patterns for Non-Intrusive Design

The video Amber Case made, for O'Reilly, is called - Calm Technology offers a way out. Unfortunately, I cannot play it on my laptop, so I bought her book. 

Here is a quote from it:

The idea of an unobtrusive technology is not new. It was a century ago that people were thinking about how to harness and create something that would become the first Calm Technology: electricity. Electricity is all around us. It works in the background without actively requiring our attention.

An ideal app or technology is one that becomes invisible in its functioning. It provides us a utility that we need without drawing excessive attention to itself. Unlike electricity, much of our current technology breaks without warning, or interrupts us with status or software updates, taking us out of our flow and away from our goals. It stands against us and outside of us.

Well put! But she does not understand the world she is writing about. The people in that world are suffering from a panic attack. People cannot understand the Computer technology that has been forced on them - and have gone into shock. Computer technology is not hard to understand, once you cross over that gap, but looking at that gap, people freeze, and cannot do anything. 

This also applies to people in the Computer Industry, but its affect on them is different - their values have been reversed, They produce products difficult to use - but think they are just the opposite - easy to use! 

We have two populations, looking at each other - over what seems to them, to be an unbridgeable gap. 

There is a solution to this, which she recommends - put people in that gap!

This would help solve another problem - the Computer is putting people out of work. This would put them back in work again.