

Let's bring friction back into computing - gkuan
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2013/5/163774-fricative-computing/fulltext

======
tygorius
_The adverse effects of frictionless computing are all around us. Email is the
first example that comes to mind. It is simply too easy to send email
messages, so we all send too many (I am famously guilty of this) and receive
too many. It is also too easy to add recipients._

My first thought: 'Tis a poor craftsman who blames his tools.

Then at the end I discovered the author is the editor-in-chief of CACM. <Sigh>

------
snowwrestler
I think this article is dumb. And I think it is dumb in a way that many
articles are dumb: it bounces from anecdote to unrelated anecdote--from 17th
century French letters! To Facebook! To the Flash Crash!--and expects readers
to tag along, mistaking the textual proximity of data for relatedness. But
just because you put two things into the same paragraph does not mean they
arise from the same root cause.

I believe these shortcomings result from iconoclastic writing. Rather than
observations leading naturally to a thesis, the iconoclastic writer starts
with a popular opinion and inverts it into a thesis as the first step--"hey
what if instead of _reducing_ friction like everyone says, we should be
_creating_ friction?? What if friction is actually good?"

From that point the thesis transforms into a research filter. Anything that
shows that frictionless is bad (like the Flash Crash) is in; anything that
shows that frictionless is good (like telemedicine) is out. The result is a
pile of unrelated things that need to be sewn together. Like Frankenstein, the
finished product is not pretty.

~~~
munger
I totally agree with you. I could barely finish reading the article myself and
you have put into words perfectly why it was subconsciously painful to read.

Good points about bad articles in general. =)

