Sunday Review: The Case for Slow Technology

This is a personal essay for our Sunday Review, and it reflects only the author's opinion.

There is a kettle in my kitchen that I love, and I have been trying to work out why. It heats water. When the water is hot, it clicks off. It does not send me a notification about the water. It has never asked me to rate it. It stays in its lane, and when the job is finished, it lets me go. I find that I want more of my life to feel like the kettle.

The tools that ask for more

Much of the technology I use is built on a different bargain. It does its job and then asks for something else: a little more attention, a glance at a number, a return visit. None of these requests is large. Together they make a quiet weather system of interruption, and I notice it most when I try to read a book and find my hand reaching for my phone as if it had a will of its own.

I do not think the people who build these tools are villains. Many are thoughtful and many are tired. But a product that is measured by how often it is opened will, over time, become a thing that wants to be opened. That is not a conspiracy. It is simply what the measurement rewards.

What I mean by slow

When I say slow technology, I do not mean old technology, or technology that is bad at its job. I mean technology that respects the shape of a task. A good slow tool has a beginning, a middle and an end. It is the paper notebook that holds a thought and asks for nothing. It is the music player that plays an album in order. It is the e-reader that does one thing so well you forget it is there.

A few qualities seem to mark such tools:

• They have edges. You know where they stop.
• They are quiet by default. Silence is the starting state, not an option buried in settings.
• They age gracefully. They keep working without constant updates and new demands.
• They let you finish. The point is the task, not the session.

A small, unscientific experiment

Over a few months I have been making small changes, nothing heroic. I moved a few apps off my home screen. I turned off nearly every notification, and then, with some embarrassment, turned off a few more. I started leaving the phone in another room in the evening. I went back to a plain alarm clock so that the phone would not be the first thing I touched in the morning.

The goal was never to use less technology. It was to use it on purpose.

I will be honest about the limits of this. I am one person with a flexible schedule, and not everyone can mute their phone, since some jobs and some family situations require reachability. I have no data to offer, only a mood: the days feel a little wider, and my attention returns more easily when I call it. Your experience may differ, and I would distrust anyone who claims a single trick works for everybody.

Why this is not nostalgia

It would be easy to dismiss all of this as longing for a simpler time. I do not feel that. I like a great deal about modern devices, and I would not give up a map in my pocket or a call with a faraway friend. My argument is for design, and for the rest of us, for habits. We can ask more of our tools, and we can ask less of ourselves in the places where our tools should have asked less of us.

Some designers and engineers already build this way, and I hope more will. A product that knows when to stop is a product that treats a person as someone with a life beyond it.

The takeaway

If there is a lesson, it is a small one. Pick one tool this week and ask whether it stays in its lane. If it does, enjoy it. If it does not, see whether you can build a fence around it. The kettle, I have decided, has the right idea. It does what it was asked, and then it clicks off, and that is a kind of respect.