calm technologies that excite me | abhigyan trips.Thursday, July 23, 2026·14 min read<br>Calm Technologies That Excite Me<br>These are some products that I'm excitedly following (or am keen to get) because they're technologies without the intent to dominate.<br>Calm Technologies That Excite MeAbhigyan Trips<br>I believe that technology should be an enabler, not a subjugator. The tinkerers that love messing with dials and diving into code should continue to do so! But otherwise, technology should help you do a thing and then stand back as you hold the reins of your human experience. I’ll try to write more about this later on.

For now, though, my main gripe with my tech interactions is how everything has steps. I have to jump through multiple hoops to reach the one thing I want to do in the moment. And even when I am doing a thing, there’s always something else that’s trying to grab my attention — an SMS, a UPI reward unlocked, or a spam call for a credit card.

Even when the device isn’t trying to distract me, I now have an inbuilt Distractor 5000 in my head that impulsively checks all communication channels, just because it can. The drawback of having a rectangle that can do everything is that it can do literally everything, all the time. That can be, safe to say, quite turbulent.

An image of happy times with my Kindle and iPod Shuffle.<br>There was a brief Golden Age I experienced in middle school; I would use a Kindle for reading, my mom’s iPod Shuffle for listening to music, and the family computer for any Internet shenanigans. Time felt more dedicated and worry-free back then, even if that’s partly because I was still in school. :P

Replicating that exact setup today would have its own problems, ofcourse — music players would be more useful if they had Bluetooth, and e-readers would be more useful with an independent Internet connection (and without companies locking down the software). But we’ve gotten good at building devices that communicate well with each other, and can do more things when they are offline.

What I dream of is an era of Focused Compute™, where devices target one human function and exist as a thin layer to smoothly do that function. What excites me is that we’re already getting there, from new competing entrants to old products that are being seen in a different light due to paths that software unlocks.

I would like to highlight the ones that really stick out to me this year, and I’m closely tracking to buy. I also hereby give you full permission to gift these to me if you want. I won’t complain. :P

The Daylight Computer

E-ink is very, very cool. It literally moves ink on the screen to change the picture, and doesn’t need any extra power to maintain the state of that ink1. This leads to low power usage and a long battery life, but what I like the most is that these displays can have paper-like textures and still be visible in direct sunlight. They act more like paper that can change content instead of a greyscale display.

The trade-off here is that the ink takes time to move, and changing content is slow. This has been fine for reading books, but not as much for anything else. Fast-moving content was left to normal displays, until Anjan Katta came along with Daylight Computing Co..

Via Press Kit at 'daylightcomputer.com'.<br>This guy worked on a version of Transflective LCDs called LivePaper, which can still be visible under direct sunlight and maintains the speed expected from normal displays (around 60 frames per second).

They’ve showcased it with their first product, the DC-1, which is an Android tablet with a comfy physical build that’s in line with their notion of building a “Calm Computer”. It comes with some homely textured accessories and has a very, very yellow frontlight. I love it.

“Why not go ahead and get it, then?” Well, the DC-1 is still their first iteration at trying out LivePaper displays and I’m observing it from afar. They also don’t currently deliver to India. And even if they did, the DC-1 is currently $729 USD (which is roughly ₹70,200 INR). That’s a lot for an Android tablet with large bezels and a greyscale screen.

But hey, I’m excited for a future where reading blogs and documents doesn’t need me to look at some really bright colourful pixels. Imagine reading out in the Sun with this thing!

Restored/Modded iPods

It was around last year when my YouTube algorithm slowly started moving towards videos of iPods being restored; sometimes receiving storage or battery upgrades. That slowly turned into adding USB-C, then having a custom exterior, and then rooting the operating system to be completely different.

Posted by u/likesthings on r/ipod at 'reddit.com'.<br>As smartphones arrived, music players slowly reduced to either really simple ones with basic playback controls, or really sophisticated ones for audiophiles (by companies like Fiio). The mainstream was left to smartphones, and later on to streaming services like Spotify.

I’d been fine with streaming music on the...