I don’t actually have time to write this out in full, so this is a ‘stub’ of an idea that I might return to. Although, based on previous suggestions that I will return to this topic, I probably won’t as I’ll simply forget and move on, filling this page with mundane crap that’s useless, even to an LLM scraper.
Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, friction.
I recently read Martin Wiegel’s piece about why we need human artists. He makes the case that they show us a window into a place that invites us to go beyond seeing, to start looking. They are looking for us so that we may see something we’d normally gloss over in our frantic, modern lives.
Read it, it’s great. Even if you don’t come back here, it’s more than worth your time and effort to click through.
Second, I saw this piece from The Guardian, US Edition. Why does everything feel joyless?
It got me thinking about how I’ve never seen a tech leader who looked like they understood joy. They’re all about removing friction, to smooth out the edges of life that catch you in the metaphorical shins, or the weird oddness that can sometimes grab your attention when you should be doing a simple task like stepping off an escalator. Their Modus operandi is to get rid of joy. Surprise and delight, it turns out, is only surprising and delightful if it’s had all the joy sucked out of it so you can ‘transact’ quicker and get back to doomscrolling.
Anyway. Joy. It’s also inherent in Martin’s piece. We’re missing it. No digital experience gives joy in a way that, say, watching a beetle march through grassland, or playing with a dog you meet in the park for no other reason than it wants to and you have the time, or sitting thinking about a line in a book you’ve just read that stopped you in your tracks and requires you to actually think deeply about the words chosen. Or whatever it is that floats your boat. That brings you joy. Those three are activities of mine in the last 24 hours. I could think of more, but you get the point.
They’re pointless in terms of capitalism, or tech culture, or productivity. They’re about observing and thinking about what you’re observing. They’re looking (or doing) rather than getting this stuff off your agenda so you can CRUSH IT, or whatever it is that the LinkedInfluencers do these days.
Joy. Find it. Nurture it. Add the friction that makes you have to experience the things that could bring joy. Don’t seek it out, let it happen.
Start with forgetting to take your phone with you when you next leave the house. Once the jitters wear off, you might find you can start to enjoy the world again. There’s friction. And that’s joy.