The Value of Inconvenient Design
Technology makes seemingly inconvenient tasks easier — but at what cost?
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In 1926, the last remaining wolves were killed in Yellowstone National Park. It was the outcome of a centuries-long campaign to rid North America of its wolf population.
Wolves were viewed as a nuisance. They killed valuable livestock and created a barrier against our drive to conquer the West. Our bid to eradicate them was swift and effective but carried unexpected consequences.
In Yellowstone, removal of the wolves resulted in reduced pressure on the elk population, triggering a cascade of ecosystem-wide devastation. The growing elk herds decimated willow, aspen, and cottonwood plants, which caused beaver populations to collapse. This cascade of events changed the trajectory and composition of the park’s rivers as banks eroded and water temperatures rose from reduced vegetative cover. As a result, fish and songbirds suffered.
Humans are friction-obsessed.
Doug Smith, a wildlife biologist who oversaw the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, describes the original elimination of them as “kicking a pebble down a mountain slope where conditions were just right that a falling pebble could trigger an avalanche of change.”
To humans, the wolves represented nothing but unnecessary friction. To nature, they represented a crucial linchpin holding the entire ecosystem together.
Humans are friction-obsessed. Friction is our ultimate foe in a constant crusade for efficiency and optimization. It slows us down and robs us of energy and momentum. It makes things hard. We dream of futures where things run smoothly and effortlessly, where it’s all so easy.
Driven by this vision, we’ve constructed a vast techno-industrial complex that churns out endless products aimed at smoothing increasingly insignificant inconveniences.
But nature is the ultimate optimizer, having run an endless slate of A/B tests over billions of years at scale. And in nature, friction and inconvenience have stood the test of time. Not only do they remain in abundance, but they’ve proven themselves critical. Nature understands the power of friction while we have become…
