Friction: The Cure for a Society Bored to Death
eugenehealey.substack.comSaved by Keely Adler and
Friction: The Cure for a Society Bored to Death
Saved by Keely Adler and
If we want to encourage people to put in more effort, we should be using it to show them how that effort opens the possibility for other, better possibilities than the world we have now.
When there's no friction, there's no imagination. You're left as a pure consumer - a medieval king feasting in front of a court jester. You grow overstuffed and lazy upon your throne.
It’s easy to forget that friction is often what makes experiences desirable.
underpinning the zero-friction society is an insidious belief: that every instant that we spend with other people without transacting is a transaction cost getting in the way of efficient market exchange.
As platforms optimise for dwell times over interactions, they condition users to be more passive - they’re less likely to take an action, let alone buy something.
The society of the 2010s said the goal was to make everything for everyone. Algorithms promised us we could kill all the tastemakers and just discover what we like for ourselves.
What we’re rediscovering now, as Chayka also demonstrated in filterworld, was that that principle just made everything look and feel exactly the same. Taste trended towards
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