Quiet Technology

Most software is designed to be needed rather than useful. It notifies, nudges, celebrates, re-engages—it behaves like something that is afraid of being forgotten. I think the better standard is the one we hold a good colleague to: attentive when required, silent otherwise, and never demanding credit for doing its job. Quiet technology reduces the number of decisions a person has to carry. It removes friction instead of relocating it. It closes cleanly. Applied to artificial intelligence, this matters more, not less: a system that can do anything is under enormous temptation to do everything, and the result is a companion that competes for attention rather than protecting it. The measure I care about is simple and slightly unfashionable: did the person get time back, and did they leave with their attention intact? Software that answers yes to both is doing something genuinely intelligent. Software that is merely loud is doing something else.