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Calm Technology

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A few years ago I found myself on a stage at the MIT Media Lab, arguing with Nicholas Negroponte in front of 700 people. Nick was rhapsodizing about a world in which computerized "intelligent agents" will answer our every need. To illustrate Nick's idea, an actor dressed as a butler introduced speakers and entertained the audience with snide remarks. The butler was fun, up to a point, but also distracting and intrusive. Fortunately, Nick was wrong about what to expect from the third wave in computing. The defining words will not be "intelligent" or "agent", but rather "invisible" and "calm" and "connection". The first wave of computing, from 1940 to about 1980, was dominated by many people serving one computer. The second wave, still peaking, has one person and one computer in uneasy symbiosis, staring at each other across the desktop without really inhabiting each other's worlds. The third wave, just beginning, has many computers serving each person everywhere in the world. I call thi

Calm Technology CalmTechnology.com About Papers Presentations Podcast Press Contact { Open House }* Mark Weiser, Principal Scientist, Xerox PARC March 1996 *Written for “Review”, the web magazine of the Interactive Telecommunications Program of New York University. Appeared in March 1996, ITP Review 2.0. A few years ago I found myself on a stage at the MIT Media Lab, arguing with Nicholas Negroponte in front of 700 people. Nick was rhapsodizing about a world in which computerized "intelligent agents" will answer our every need. To illustrate Nick's idea, an actor dressed as a butler introduced

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