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Coffee & Chips: Gathering the microchip and sensor environment over morning coffee
On one Friday each month, Forskningsparken and CC-NorChip invite you to inspiring, informal talks by leading players in semiconductor and sensor technology.
New season of Calm Tech Café
Published: 25 August 2026
Text: Tobias Dahl
Photo: Anne-Marie Korseberg Stokke
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How can we build technology that truly improves human life without draining our focus, privacy, or well-being? In a new season of Calm Tech Café at Forskningsparken, we are now inviting researchers who dig deeper into technology, psychology, behavioral patterns, and habits.
The idea of calm technology was introduced more than 30 years ago, yet it has never been more relevant. Today’s digital products are often designed to capture attention at any cost, driven by ad-based business models, data tracking, and persuasive design patterns like infinite scrolling. The result? Technology that exhausts us, undermines healthy relationships, and challenges democratic values.
As the EU’s Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager once put it: “Technology should serve humans, not the other way around.” But what does that actually look like in practice?
A new generation of products is pointing in a different direction. Companies like reMarkable show that it’s possible to build successful businesses around focus, simplicity, and human-centred design, rather than addiction and distraction. Still, many questions remain: What makes these products work? What trade-offs are required? And how can more founders, designers, and researchers follow suit?
This meetup series brings together researchers, founders, and industry practitioners to explore how technology can better align with human values. Through concrete examples, open discussion, and shared experience, we’ll dig into what humane technology looks like and how to build it.
Whether you’re building products, shaping policy, or simply curious about the future of tech, this series is for anyone who believes we can, and must, do better.
Previous speakers:
Tobias Dahl, SINTEF: An overview of calm technologies
Audun Sanderud: HiRO - a music player for kids
Thomas Daykin Johansen: JunoMobil - How can mobile service operators play a role in the shift towards more humane tech?
Thomas Ramberg: Dory - The world’s first customizable epaper door sign that combines Scandinavian design aesthetics with personal expression
Amber Case, The Calm Tech Institute: How to use the Principles of Calm Technology™ to design the next generation of connected devices
Vemund Sætre Skuleberg (Waldorf/Steiner), Nina Johansen (Montessori Norway) and Tobias Dahl (SINTEF): NorCode - A dedicated device to develop Programming and Robotic skills, free from distractions
Martin Rydving, UiO: Skrin - A smartphone pacifier
Børge Strand-Bergesen: Henry Audio - Hi-End Audio made elegant and easy!
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