Friction hasn’t disappeared from the economy. It has been redistributed — from the digital to the physical, from the individual to the collective, from the visible to the felt.
The loneliness we call personal is often structural. The smoothness we celebrate in tech is subsidised by someone else’s exhaustion. And the curated worlds we retreat to are buffers, not solutions.
There’s a sentence in here I keep returning to: “Friction is also where new systems can emerge.” Yes. That’s the hope! Bit only if we’re willing to feel it, not just route around it.
Highly recommend reading the whole thing!
Updated to add this brilliant piece by Indy Johar. [link]
“I will not build my safety on someone else’s precarity.”
Thx Rakesh!
Originally written for LinkedIn on 9 June 2025. View original →
Gautam John 
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