The friction is gone. Interfaces, cities, products, and supply chains have been engineered toward zero resistance. The question this piece pursues is not whether that happened, but what it cost.
The argument cuts across disciplines. Artists and designers are not just commenting on optimisation culture, they are working inside it, and the piece traces how that tension shapes the objects, spaces, and experiences they produce. The details here matter: specific works, specific practitioners, specific aesthetic choices made under measurable constraints.
Read the full piece for the historical arc it builds, not just the conclusion. The diagnosis of how frictionlessness became an ideology, and how resistance became a design choice rather than a default condition, is the argument worth sitting with.
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