Artificial Mindfulness: What Calm Technology Teaches Us About Building Software That Gives Peace of Mind

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. So why do most of our tools demand constant attention?

I've been thinking a lot about what I'm calling "Artificial Mindfulness."

At DhyanaTech, our entire philosophy centers on reducing friction and creating peace of mind through software. But this morning, a new question struck me: We talk endlessly about Artificial Intelligence—what it can do, what it means for society, whether it will take our jobs. But what about Artificial Mindfulness? What would it mean to build technology that doesn't just process information intelligently, but that embodies mindfulness in how it interacts with us?

It turns out I'm not the first to wrestle with this. But the conversation has been happening under different names, in different corners, for thirty years. And I think it's time to bring these threads together—and push them further.

We've Had "AI" Since the Calculator

Here's a thought that might sound provocative: We've had artificial intelligence for a very long time.

A calculator is artificially intelligent. It can compute Pi to arbitrary precision. It can solve equations in milliseconds that would take humans hours. By any reasonable definition, it possesses capabilities that exceed our natural human cognition. It is artificial, and in a narrow but real sense, it is intelligent.

And what did people do with this extraordinary tool? Many of us used it to spell BOOBIES upside down (5318008, for the uninitiated).

I don't say this to be cynical. I say it because it reveals something important: there is always a gap between what technology can do and what we choose to do with it. The capability is artificial. The application is thoroughly human.

This pattern goes back further than calculators. A hammer is a tool that grants its possessor increased capability—the ability to drive nails, to build shelters, to shape the physical world in ways bare hands cannot. In a sense, it's an artifact that confers a kind of intelligence: the intelligence to solve problems you couldn't solve without it. The same is true of the wheel, the lever, the written word.

The question has never been whether we can build tools that extend human capability. We've been doing that since the first sharpened stone. The question is whether those tools make us wiser, calmer, more present—or more distracted, more frantic, more alienated from ourselves.

Intelligence Is a Relative, Abstract Noun

Here's the thing about intelligence: it's relational. We don't say a hammer is "intelligent" in isolation; we say it makes certain tasks possible. The same is true of AI. A large language model can write code, summarize documents, answer questions, generate images. But having access to intelligent technology doesn't make the person—or the society—intelligent.

Consider music. Anyone can pick up an acoustic guitar, learn three or four chords, write some rhyming couplets, and create a song. The barrier to entry has never been lower. YouTube tutorials, chord apps, rhyming dictionaries—the tools exist. And yet, how many people actually do it?

The same pattern is emerging with AI. The tools for building sophisticated applications are more accessible than ever. APIs, frameworks, pre-trained models, no-code platforms—developers and designers have extraordinary capabilities at their fingertips. But how many are putting them to use in a mindful way? How many are asking not just "what can this do?" but "what should this do? How will this affect the humans who use it? Does this create peace of mind or destroy it?"

I was taught to take my time and do it right the first time. The dominant Silicon Valley ethos—"move fast and break things"—is the opposite philosophy. It treats attention as an extractable resource, users as engagement metrics, and ethics as something you bolt on after the product ships (if ever).

I think that's backwards.

The Bubble Will Burst. The Technology Won't Disappear.

I know how bubbles work. I've seen them inflate and pop. And I believe the current AI hype cycle will follow the same pattern—the speculative froth will dissipate, the overvalued startups will consolidate or fail, and the breathless predictions will give way to a quieter reality.

But here's what I also know: the underlying technology isn't going anywhere.

We saw this with electricity. When it was new, it was exciting—everyone was making new applications, new appliances, buttons and beeps and gadgets. Over time, it became mundane. It became infrastructure. It wove itself into the fabric of daily life until we stopped noticing it. From high-voltage transmission lines to the low-voltage battery in your Apple Watch, electricity is so embedded in our existence that we can't imagine life without it. We only notice it when it fails.

We saw it with telephones, with personal computers, with the internet, with email. Early adopters and naysayers battled it out. The naysayers lost—not because they were wrong about the risks, but because they underestimated how thoroughly these technologies would become part of the background of life.

AI tools will follow the same arc. Those who learn to work with them now will have an edge. Those who hold out will eventually adapt anyway, just later. The question isn't whether to engage with AI—it's how to engage with it.

Calm Technology: The Road Not Taken

This brings me to a body of work I've been studying: the tradition of "Calm Technology."

In 1995, two researchers at Xerox PARC—Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown—published a paper called "Designing Calm Technology." Weiser had coined the term "ubiquitous computing" in 1988, predicting an era when computers would be everywhere, embedded in our walls and clothes and everyday objects. He saw what was coming. And he was worried.

"If computers are everywhere," he wrote, "they better stay out of the way."

Their paper opened with an unusual example: the "Dangling String." An eight-foot piece of plastic spaghetti hanging from a motor in the ceiling, connected to an Ethernet cable. When network traffic was light, it hung still. When traffic was heavy, it whirled and hummed. It communicated information without demanding attention. You could glance at it—or not. It lived in the periphery.

Weiser and Brown argued that calm technology should move easily between the periphery and the center of our attention. A tea kettle does this: set it and forget it, until it whistles. It doesn't send push notifications. It doesn't gamify the boiling process. It does its job and gets out of the way.

"A person's primary task should not be computing," they wrote, "but being human."

Weiser died in 1999, before the smartphone existed. We got his ubiquitous computing. But calm? We got the opposite. We got an attention economy, where every app competes for the scarce resource of human focus.

The Lineage Continues

Weiser and Brown's ideas didn't disappear. They were picked up and expanded by Amber Case, a cyborg anthropologist who discovered their papers in 2007 while writing her thesis on smartphones.

Case developed a set of Calm Technology principles that have since been adopted by Microsoft, Samsung, Google, Airbnb, and others. In 2024, she founded the Calm Tech Institute, which certifies products that meet calm design standards.

Her principles are worth studying:

• Technology should require the smallest possible amount of attention.
• Technology can communicate, but doesn't need to speak. Create ambient awareness through different senses.
• Technology should amplify the best of technology and the best of humanity. Machines shouldn't act like humans; humans shouldn't act like machines.
• Technology should work even when it fails. Graceful degradation, offline capability, sensible defaults.
• Technology takes time to introduce to humanity. Respect existing social norms; don't violate them without good reason.

Separately, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang—a professional futurist and visiting scholar at Stanford—developed the concept of "Contemplative Computing." His 2013 book The Distraction Addiction argues that we can redesign our relationship with technology to support focus and presence rather than fragment it.

"Contemplative computing isn't enabled by a technological breakthrough," Pang writes. "You don't buy it. You do it."

He advocates for "zenware"—software designed to calm the mind—and practices like the digital Sabbath. He points to Buddhist monks who blog: people trained in meditation who use technology purposefully, staying present rather than zoning out.

Artificial Mindfulness: A Synthesis

So here's where I'm landing.

We have Artificial Intelligence—tools that extend human cognitive capability. We have Calm Technology—a design philosophy that respects human attention. We have Contemplative Computing—a practice of mindful engagement with our devices.

What we need is a synthesis: Artificial Mindfulness.

Artificial Mindfulness is the intentional design and use of technology in ways that support presence, reduce friction, and create peace of mind. It's not just about making tools that are smart; it's about making tools that are wise—that know when to speak and when to be silent, when to demand attention and when to fade into the background.

It's the opposite of engagement maximization. It's the opposite of "move fast and break things." It's the recognition that technology shapes not just what we can do, but who we become—and that this shaping should be intentional, ethical, and humane.

At DhyanaTech, this is what we're trying to build. Software that doesn't compete for your attention but earns your trust. Applications that help you do what you need to do and then get out of the way. Tools that give you peace of mind—not anxiety, not distraction, not the nagging sense that you should be checking something.

The word "dhyana" comes from Sanskrit; it refers to meditation, to focused contemplation, to the kind of sustained attention that leads to insight. It's the root of the Chinese "chán" and the Japanese "zen." We chose it because it captures what we believe software should support: not scattered attention, but gathered presence. Not noise, but signal. Not agitation, but calm.

The Invitation

I don't have all the answers. I'm not sure anyone does. But I believe these questions are worth asking:

• What would it look like to design AI that embodies mindfulness, not just intelligence?
• How do we build tools that respect the gap between capability and application—that don't just enable more, but enable better?
• What would a "calm AI" look like? One that informs without demanding, assists without intruding, knows when to speak and when to stay silent?
• And as users: how do we cultivate a more contemplative relationship with the technologies flooding into our lives?

Electricity was once revolutionary. Now it's invisible—the ultimate calm technology. It runs through our walls and powers our devices and we notice it only when it fails.

Maybe the best AI will be the same. Not the flashiest, not the most impressive, not the one that generates the most buzz—but the one that weaves itself so gracefully into our lives that we forget it's there. The one that gives us peace of mind.

That's the future I'm building toward. I'd love to hear what you think.

Further Reading

• Mark Weiser & John Seely Brown, "Designing Calm Technology" (1995) — calmtech.com/papers
• Amber Case, Calm Technology: Principles and Patterns for Non-Intrusive Design (O'Reilly, 2015)
• Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, The Distraction Addiction (Little, Brown, 2013)
• Calm Tech Institute — calmtech.institute

What's your experience with technology that calms versus technology that demands? Have you found tools that genuinely give you peace of mind? I'd love to continue this conversation.

Steve Dickens - DhyanaTech Inc.