The term affordance was coined by J. J. Gibson in 1977. He borrowed the word from ‘afford’ to mean: perceived elements in the environment that explain how the environment behaves. Gibson’s affordance includes both the environment and the animal; which is to say that it explains how both environment and animal affect one another’s behavior as they adapt to fluctuations in time and space.
According the Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown (1996), “peripheral information” extends the notion of “affordances” to describe action enabling technologies that are reachable, yet on the periphery of perception and therefore encalming. Designing for calm technology would then mean to provide non-invasive tools or cues for action that encalm while stimulating the senses.
source: Weiser, Mark; & John Seely Brown. “The Coming Age of Calm Technology.” Xerox PARC: October 5, 1996.