Is the “frictionless” society a trap?

But the main thing that annoys people is more philosophical. A futurist named Thomas Klaffke warns that “frictionless” is not just a word, but a worldview — a “super dystopian” vision of “no toil, no effort, no thinking.” The Essayists fear that the dream of a frictionless existence makes people fearful and lonely, unable to tolerate challenge or discomfort. (Friction, after all, is what happens when two things touch.) A business writer from India says yes “exaggerated metaphors,” that a tough but rewarding conversation just isn’t the same as a frustrating user interface. A New York magazine article evangelizes “friction-maxxing”—in which, instead of seeing “life itself as uncomfortable and something to constantly escape from,” you build up your tolerance for difficulty by doing things in a rough way.

These complaints, oddly enough, echo the oldest the use of “frictionless” cited in the Oxford English Dictionary – from an 1848 satirical poem that mentions “a brain cold, quite frictionless, silent / Whose internal police destroy the buds of all tumult, — / a brain like a permanent straitjacket on / a heart that vainly tries to pull the button”. That’s what some blame for our love of hyper-convenience: it makes us cold-blooded jerks whose deepest relationships are with delivery apps. The charge is hackneyed and pathetic, but hard to dismiss. A huge amount of human wisdom—intuitions about raising children, research on education, proverbs about the meaning of life—revolves around the idea that too much ease actually leads to impotence and stagnation.

However, if it’s any consolation, there’s at least one reason to worry a little less about it. When you hear “frictionless” today, how often is it about a system that clears the way to yours goals, as opposed to system designers guiding you to them their? Consider a digital marketing service that advises companies to “ditch questionable words like ‘sign up'” in favor of language like “get instant access” – language that might entice a little more of us to crack email addresses we’d hoped not to. (Of course, if you want to delete that account, one day you’ll be faced with as much artificial friction as the company can legally handle.) In office jobs, removing friction is usually about getting customers, clients, or employees to do what the company wants. These well-oiled slopes are optimized for sales or productivity or cost reduction, not for your pleasure.

This is, in fact, part of what writers like Klaffke warn about—the amount of time we spend driven by a landscape built to discourage us from thinking, acting disruptively, or veering off course. But it can be strangely encouraging to think of our most annoying battles with this environment as a positive sign. The idea that modern society is dangerously focused on hyper-convenience can easily be shattered with a single phone call to your health insurance company. The challenge that follows doesn’t have to compete with the rewards of making friends or woodworking, and it’s still surrounded by plenty of effort to satisfy your desire for comfort. Still: It’s a helpful reminder that the world isn’t trying to, and never will, try to coddle you into oblivion.

Nitsuh Abebe is the magazine’s story editor.