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How Convenience Kills Curiosity
Stop helping me. I’m trying to think.
I’ve been thinking about the death of curiosity.
Remember when you had to figure out how a new piece of software worked by poking around its menus?
When finding an obscure fact meant wandering through library stacks, accidentally discovering three unrelated interesting things along the way?
When getting somewhere required unfolding a paper map so massive it would never fold back correctly?
Those friction-filled experiences are nearly extinct now. We’ve optimized them away in the name of convenience, and something important has been lost in the transition.
Type a question, get an answer — ideally without even clicking through to a webpage. The algorithm tries to anticipate exactly what you want, then delivers it with surgical precision. This seems like an unalloyed good until you realize what’s missing: the pathway of discovery, the intellectual side-quests, the context that situates knowledge within a broader landscape.
Every product manager in Silicon Valley has been trained to reduce friction. If it takes three clicks, reduce it to two. If it takes two, try one. If users have to think, it’s considered a failure. The ideal interface is intuitive, immediate, invisible. And it…
