I was listening to The Economist “Babbage” podcast yesterday, and was really struck my something Timoni West said. She mentioned Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law - “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. She then said; “The reverse is also true - any sufficiently rigorous technology doesn’t feel like technology any more”.

This is the ideal that I want all the techological tools that I build to have. I want my technology to be ambient, not something I think about, but something that extends my capabilities without requiring thought or effort. My technologies should operate in the background. They should trigger when needed without ceremony. They should act on the world in a way that seems obvious and natural. They should need almost no maintenance.