It’s a subtle yet persistent irony: The more technology works its way into our lives, the less obvious it becomes.

In part, that’s because gadgets and appliances have simply become smaller. Consider the progression from boom boxes to Walkmans to iPod shuffles. “As we move from the age of mechanical devices to an age of digital devices, technology is becoming more concealed,” says Toshiko Mori, chair of the architecture department at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Computer-driven home gadgetry is more compact and easily hidden, and offers greater freedom than the old stuff.

It’s also frequently out of sight, because once something stops being newfangled and luxurious, we have no desire to show it off anymore.

Our dens were once dominated by TV-housing mahogany cabinets nearly the size of Volkswagens. The ceiling-high stack of black AV components that once marked a kicking sound system has been replaced by media servers that sit behind walls. Refrigerators, dishwashers, and range tops were once signs of material comfort, but it takes a little squinting to find the fridge in many of today’s most fashionable kitchens; no longer a brightly colored showpiece, it’s been broken up into drawers or meticulously paneled to disappear against the cabinets. Everything from stereo speakers to light switches to air-conditioning units has been reinvented to blend into the woodwork, as it were.

Mori sees this as a potential boon. “Gadgets are more concealed, and it makes for a more human, humane environment,” she says. So humane that many devices react to the touch of a finger or, in the case of the motion-activated light switches offered by a company called Anigmo, the mere wave of a hand. And devices that operate by voice recognition, as in The Jetsons, are not far away.

So what of the 50-inch flat-screen televisions that now seem to dominate every room and don’t exactly fit in with the culture of concealment? Certainly these screens are becoming so thin that they don’t seem as obtrusive as their predecessors. And interior designers can obscure them by framing them in wood or covering them with mirrors. But for many people, showing off the big, expensive megapixel TV is precisely the point.

“People don’t mind seeing the big flat-screen as much as they did the fat, chunky televisions that had to be hidden away in an armoire,” says Chris Barrett, director of interiors at KAA Design Group, in Los Angeles. “Some of my clients actually see them as pieces of art on the wall. I think that people have just finally accepted that their lives revolve around television, so their rooms ought to as well.”

The more our priorities shift, the more they seem to stay the same.