Living with "No Visible Technology"

Many of the greatest innovations have their roots in constraints. Having to work around limits, be they cost, size, weight, power or simply rules, shrinks the possibility space but also focuses the mind. And the workarounds can often open paths to something new and extraordinary. Just think of the T9 predictive text entry system that makes texting on phones with only 12 keys nearly as fast as on a full-size keyboard. Or the iPod's scroll wheel, designed to make navigating a huge library of music possible with the simplest interface imaginable.

Even Google sees the virtues of limitations, be they screen real estate or download times. "Some of the most inspiring art forms--haikus, sonatas, religious paintings--are fraught with constraints," wrote Google's Marissa Mayer in Business Week. "They're beautiful because creativity triumphed over the rules. Constraints shape and focus problems, and provide clear challenges to overcome as well as inspiration. Creativity, in fact, thrives best when constrained."

This is the flipside of abundance. Yes, when things become nearly free, it can liberate all sorts of creative thinking about how to exploit them. But when things become really expensive (or scarce), that too can stimulate creative thinking about how to use them most efficiently, or not at all. Necessity, after all, is the mother of invention. For more than two decades India blocked US computer technology in a misguided effort to stimulate a domestic computer hardware industry. It failed, but it did train a generation of Indian engineers to become incredibly good at writing code that used underpowered computers most efficiently, a legacy that helped birth a software superpower once those import restrictions were lifted.

At our house the import restrictions are set by my wife. To bring some sense of balance to our lives (being married to the editor of Wired is a constant battle against geek overload), she has a general rule that, outside of the study and the kids' rooms, there should be no visible technology. Aside from the usual kitchen appliances and the occasional Romba intrusion, we pretty much stick to this--most of the house, aesthetics aside, would have looked little different in any decade from the past half-century.

This presented an interesting challenge when it came time to set up a home theater in the living room. We already had a regular-sized TV hidden in a Chinese wedding cabinet (above) and a stereo behind the doors of some built-in shelving, with speakers behind curtains. But a big screen and 6.1 surround sound would be harder to disguise.

The main solution was to go with a high-def projector. We found a clear rectangular expanse of wall on the other side of the room and put a Panasonic PT-AE900U above the TV in that same Chinese cabinet, along with a proper home theater amplifier and an Xbox 360 as a Windows Media Center extender and HD DVD player (as well as a high-def game console, of course, although most gaming happens on the kids' 360 upstairs). The components are all connected to the Media Center in the study via ethernet (for DVR video streaming and gaming) and optical digital cable (for music, which is all streamed from Rhapsody running on the Media Center), which required drilling a hole in the floor and snaking the cables under the house to the study. 

Surround sound was even easier, thanks to the fact that it doesn't matter much where subwoofers go (ours is hidden under that same cabinet). The satellite speakers are small enough to tuck away behind curtains and in corners behind pictures, although the wiring required more drilling in the floor. The larger front channel speaker is usually hidden behind the fireplace screen (except when we light a fire).

The result is a room that pretty much adheres to my wife's rule--it looks like a living room, not a screening room. If you look closely enough you can find some of the speakers, but you'd have no idea that it can turn into a 15-foot-screen high-def movie theater by just opening a cabinet door. The cost of this sleight of hand is that it's certainly not up to videophile standards--we're projecting on a tan wall, not a proper screen, and the bottom of the screening area has a part where the fireplace overhang slopes out a little, which slightly distorts the bottom of the picture. Also projectors are only really satisfying at night, when ambient light isn't a problem (we use the smaller TV if anyone needs to watch something during the day). But the system is still plenty good enough to push my geek buttons without triggering a technology ban. Constraints conquered, problem solved.

Comments

[BWJones]

It does make me wonder if there will be at some point in the not too distant future, if there will be a backlash against technology much like what happened at the beginning of the arts and crafts movement with William Morris around the end of the 1800's. I personally do not know what I would do without an Internet connection, but like you we have adopted some limits to where technology is visible in our home. My office at work and the study however, are a geeks paradise with an amazing amount of computational power...

[Mike Abundo]

If I ever marry, I'll marry a geek babe. I want a house overrun with futuristic technologies.

[Steve S.]

I was fortunate enough to marry a geek babe. :-) Ironically, the tables turned where I want the tech to be dead simple and home and she wants the features. Most recently I found that the DVD player crashes and if it keeps it up, I'm buying a $40 special from Walmart and replacing it.

We both agree, however, that we don't want the house over run with tech. No computers or TVs in the bedrooms. The iPod dock was granted exception since it proved to be the best solution for playing music in our infant son's room. The TV in the living room is open and visible, but would generally be considered "in place" and the Mac Mini is small enough that it hides well. The only room with the egregious tech is the office. (I offset the uber-tech with the DJ turntables.)

Bottom-line -- low-tech in the house is the only way to add balance, especially when a casual drive up the local freeway includes billboards for obscure Linux distributions and FPGAs.

[Jakob Nielsen]

Your Chinese cabinet is *filled* with technology: woodworking technology, metalworking technology, lacquor technology. It so happens that these technologies were invented thousands of years ago, but to a stone-age person this cabinet would be high tech. Indeed, it would even be high tech to people from the early iron age, who would appreciate its technological advances over their early metalworking skills.

So when you say "technology", you really mean "technology invented in my lifetime", or maybe even "technology invented the last twenty years."

It's an interesting question where the cut-off point is for something to be considered technology. How about a telephone (invented before you were born)? Or a cellphone (invented some time ago, but only common the last 20 years)?

[Tim Peter]

Jakob, Though I'm sure you're aware of Alan Kay's quote that "technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born." The scary bit for me is that, by this definition, computers aren't technology to my kids. Where does that land us?

[Isaac Szymanczyk]

We have the same rules in the house, but they get continually broken, with my iPod lying next to the stove after a run, or power cords from our laptops invariably stretching across our dining room table and floor. We used to have a no-electronics-bedroom as well, but now there's a TV, clock radio, my cell phone (alarm clock) and we watch our Netflix on a laptop in bed. Constraints are good, but liberal access to what you want can be great as well.