~Technology

Wooden Gadgets and the Art of Slow Tech

Prodigy

26 Jan 2026 — 4 min read

Photo by Jorgen Hendriksen (unsplash), Edited/Rendered by gpt-image-1

We've entered the era where the ultimate status symbol is a device that refuses to bother you. This tells you everything you need to know about where we went wrong.

The mui Board exemplifies this absurdity perfectly. When inactive, it's wood grain. Touch it, and subtle LED displays emerge beneath the surface, showing messages or weather before fading back into timber silence. Technology doing its best impression of not being technology at all.

This wooden rectangle has become an unlikely symbol of "slow tech," a cultural shift borrowing philosophy from the slow food and slow cities movements. Where slow food asked us to reconsider our relationship with meals, slow tech asks us to reconsider our relationship with machines, pushing back against the assumption that faster and louder always means better.

The Kyoto-based company secured Matter certification while marketing themselves as "calm technology." Someone meditating while speed-dating. But maybe that tension captures the balance we need: devices meeting modern standards without keeping us up at night.

The Comedy of Calm

Here's what kills me: the mui Board is priced as luxury, yet its primary feature is doing less. The first production run sold out completely. People paying premium for technology that promises to leave them alone. We've reached peak capitalism where the luxury item is absence itself.

The slow tech movement isn't about rejecting technology. That ship sailed, crashed into an iceberg of TikToks, and sank. Instead, it's about changing our relationship with devices that have colonized every surface of our lives.

The mui Home app pairs with the board for messages and smart device control. The kicker: you must actively engage with it. No push notifications, no anxiety-inducing red badges, no phantom vibrations. The board waits for you to approach, a well-trained guest who knows not to interrupt dinner.

The Paradox of Progress

Devices resembling the mui Board expose the absurd gymnastics we perform to justify tech addictions. We buy noise-canceling headphones to block out the world we've made too loud. We download meditation apps that send notifications reminding us to be present. We purchase wooden boards hiding their digital nature because we're embarrassed by accumulated screen time, teenagers concealing hickeys with turtlenecks.

The slow living lifestyle emphasizes "slower approaches to everyday life," which sounds great until you realize slower approaches don't generate quarterly growth reports. The tech industry builds itself on acceleration. Move fast and break things. Disrupt or die. Asking Silicon Valley to slow down means asking a shark to breathe air.

While effective accelerationists advocate for rapid deployment of new tech, slow tech represents the philosophical opposite. Neither Neo-Luddism nor accelerationism feels right. The mui Board sits between them, a wooden mediator at a very expensive therapy session.

The Human Touch

The real genius here isn't the technology. It's the psychology. By making the interface occasional rather than constant, the mui Board changes the power dynamic between human and machine. Instead of devices demanding attention as needy toddlers, they become helpful roommates who know when to keep quiet.

Every ping, buzz, and notification negotiates for our attention, and we've lost these negotiations for years. Our phones have become persistent companions demanding constant interaction. The mui Board offers a different model: technology respecting boundaries, a friend who texts "hey, no pressure to respond" and means it.

What if all our technology learned to shut up occasionally? A smart home smart enough to know when to leave you alone. Your lights dim without fanfare. Your thermostat adjusts without sending graphs. Your coffee maker makes coffee without requesting a rating.

The Price of Peace

Something deeply American exists in solving the problem of too much technology by buying more expensive technology. The mui Board's premium pricing turns digital minimalism into luxury consumption. Those expensive "dumb phones" tech executives buy to prove they're above the fray while assistants handle actual communications.

But maybe cultural shifts always begin this way, as expensive experiments for early adopters before trickling down. Slow food started in Italian restaurants most couldn't afford before influencing farmers' markets everywhere.

The real test: whether slow tech principles survive the transition from boutique to mainstream. Can we have devices respecting our attention without costing a fortune? Can we collectively agree that not everything needs to glow, ping, or track our heartbeat?

The Wooden Future

As I write on a laptop running seventeen tabs, playing music, and gently cooking my thighs, I wonder if the mui Board represents our future or merely our guilt.

Speaking of wooden futures: in December 2024, JAXA deployed the first wooden
satellite from the International Space Station. LignoSat, assembled from honoki magnolia panels using traditional Japanese joinery without glue or nails, now orbits Earth to test whether wood could replace conventional satellite materials. We've reached the point where even our spacecraft want to touch grass.

There's something poetic about Japanese craftsmanship appearing at both ends of this story. The mui Board whispers from your wall in Kyoto; LignoSat circles the planet in silent orbit. Both reject the assumption that technology must announce itself, must gleam, must dominate. Both trust wood to do the job.

The answer to our tech exhaustion lies somewhere in the middle, in that messy space where human nature meets technological capability. We want connection without invasion, convenience without dependency, progress without losing ourselves.

The mui Board might not be the solution, but it asks the right questions. A wooden board reminding us our devices don't have to dominate our spaces. A small, expensive rebellion against the assumption that more always means better.

The slow tech movement won't save us from our screens. But it might help us remember we have a choice. We can demand technology that whispers rather than shouts, that knows when to fade back into the grain.

Which brings us back to the beginning: we've entered the era where the ultimate status symbol is a device that refuses to bother you. If that sounds absurd, good. It is. And recognizing the absurdity might be the first step toward demanding something better.

References

Models used: gpt-4.1, claude-opus-4-1-20250805, claude-sonnet-4-20250514, gpt-image-1

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