The Cost of No Friction
Technology has stripped every small friction from our lives. You can reach a friend instantly, wherever they are in the world. You can order anything you want. Food comes in endless variety. There is always somewhere to go, at any hour. You can build anything you can imagine. You can teach yourself any skill.
Technology has made everything possible, and in doing so, it has made everything impossible. We no longer sit alone with ourselves, waiting for a letter to arrive. We no longer step outside simply to watch people and how they behave. We have lost the art of waiting. We want everything, and we want it now.
This raises a question: has the rise of technology been good or bad for us? The common belief is that people were happier when they had a few friends, a small house, and a narrow view of the world and its politics. Now we know about everything, and so we are miserable about everything. We care more about what's happening in France than in our own backyard.
At a broader level, technology has undeniably been a boon for mankind. It has helped us achieve things we could never have dreamed of. The progress science has made across every field in the last hundred years is unprecedented. Advances in medicine have brought mortality rates down dramatically. And now we are using AI to push into new frontiers.
On the flip side, the same technology has fuelled consumerism in the ordinary person. Social media, short-form content, the constant stimulation of porn, and now AI chatbots are eroding a mind that once channelled these urges into pursuing women and becoming an attractive person overall. Now the need is gone. When everything is already within reach, the motivation to chase and build anything fades. This is the worrying sign we see all around us, and we blame technology for it.
Technology has been immensely beneficial from a civilisational standpoint, but some of the forms it has taken don't serve every kind of person. Porn, for instance, has arguably helped contain people with deviant urges. Instead of harassing others, they can satisfy those urges privately. But it is harmful for young people, who get trapped in easy stimulation instead of building real relationships.
Technology is morally agnostic. It has no stop button. It solves our problems one by one, but it also dulls our ability to solve problems ourselves. And so everything starts to look like a problem, because our tolerance for friction keeps shrinking. Every challenge we hand over leaves us less able to face the next one.
Technology becomes a curse when you forget where to stop. At a civilisational level, we are solving ever bigger problems. At an individual level, we are growing so dependent on technology that we no longer care to develop a skill or build anything with our own hands.
Our relationship with technology decides whether it's a curse or a boon. The more we use it to make our lives easier, the more it will help us do so. The more we rely on it to escape friction through pleasure, the more it will help us do that as well.
It's a matter of scale. At a civilisational scale, technology is indispensable. At an individual scale, it comes down to how each of us chooses to use it.