In AntiFragile, Nassim Taleb says:
Technology is at its best when it is invisible. I am convinced that technology is of greatest benefit when it displaces the deleterious, unnatural, alienating, and, most of all, inherently fragile preceding technology.
Counterexamples are easiest to think about; over-engineered products with extra tech - for example, a touch screen on a refrigerator. To be sure, there are plenty of cases where technology would be better if elements of it were simply removed. My favorite, identified by the book The Best Interface is No Interface is London installing screens on the sides of garbage bins. The screens showed the weather details... on outdoor garbage bins.
However, there's a deeper idea here that is worth exploring. If you remove the screen from the garbage bin, that's not 'invisible technology'; it just goes back to being a regular garbage bin. Invisible Technology is something more than the removal of unnecessary features.
To Taleb's credit, he gave a much more nuanced example in AntiFragile: barefoot running shoes. After companies spent decades innovating on the technology underneath the feet of runners - experimenting with sole thickness, cushioning and springiness, different materials - we are starting to realize that actually, the small variances in ground texture are useful information for our feet and body. As your feet react to small changes in uneven surfaces, your tendons strengthen and your balance improves. A super thick running shoe sole hides this information from you. Barefoot running shoes (like the Xero brand1), therefore, are perhaps a more interesting example of 'invisible technology' because the value is not just about the lack of something, it's less being more. It's addition by subtraction - getting some inferior tool or technology out of the way.
Perhaps a working definition of Invisible Technology could look like this:
When starting from a current technology today, Invisible Technology is the application of knowledge to eliminate any unnecessary features from a tool, such that the remaining functionality is better; better than no technology (of course), but also better than the prior version that had extra features. The new version compliments our natural human strengths, resulting in powerful ease of use. Benefits could include minimized mental context switching, and increased focus - often the user hardly thinks about or notices the technology at all, but still benefits from it.
Here’s some more examples:
Today, most tech companies are extremely data-hungry. As soon as you want to try it out, you must login, download apps, accept cookies, and on and on. It's dressed up as functionality, but under the hood is a high-friction user experience, and a data collection machine. Sometimes, companies need to have the courage to build a super minimalist product that just does its job well and stays out of our way otherwise.
This mentality is what informed the creation of the Farmer's Assistant. There is no app, and I'm doing my best to prevent the need for even a UI interface except for when the user wants extra details. Most people, including the farmer themself, will only interact via simple texting. The rest of the technology is invisible.
1 This is not an endorsement. Unless, of course, Xero decides to send me some money, in which case it is.