The Dark Side of Frictionless Technology

But for me, for now, the friction is what I’m looking for. I am grateful — genuinely — for what Google and Apple and others did to make digital life easy over the past two decades. But too much ease carries a cost. I was lulled into the belief that I didn’t have to make decisions. Now my digital life is a series of monuments to the cost of combinin... See more

But when ease becomes the default measure of value—when “fast” and “frictionless” are always better, we lose something critical: the slow, inconvenient texture of real life and real relationships.

Our most advanced technologies are not enhancing our connectivity, but thwarting it. They are replacing and devaluing our humanity, and—in many different ways—undermining our respect for one another and ourselves. Sadly, this has been by design. But that’s also why it can be reversed.