From Weiser and Brown's 1996 article, "The Coming Age of Calm Technology [pdf]" this still rings true today:

When computers are used behind closed doors by experts, calmness is relevant to only a few. Computers for personal use have focused on the excitement of interaction. But when computers are all around, so that we want to compute while doing something else and have more time to be more fully human, we must radically rethink the goals, context and technology of the computer and all the other technology crowding into our lives. Calmnness is a fundamental challenge for all technological design of the next fifty years.