🔵 Reappraising our relationship with friction

It used to be a bad word. Now? Maybe not so much.

Historically, in the context of getting anything done, the word “friction” inevitably carried a negative connotation. In fact, one might argue that the march of progress over the last 10-15 years has been largely centred around making everything frictionless. In short, we wanted everything and we wanted it now.

AI is perhaps the apex point of this argument. We can now generate songs instantly on Suno, or images and videos immediately with Sora. It all takes minutes, and it is all incredibly easy.

Therein lies the problem though. What comes to us easily is not valued, and increasingly this devaluation has been spreading across arts and culture like a plague.

Mercifully, it feels like people are increasingly tuning in to the shallow, unrewarding nature of this relationship. When things are available in abundance and are instantly accessed, we simply attribute zero value to them because we have not had to endure any friction whatsoever in order to obtain them.

Hence, it feels like friction is perhaps no longer such a dirty word. Younger generations are returning to iPods in droves (more on that in a moment!) and increasingly, it feels like people are seeing more value in deeper connections to anything from music to visual arts and beyond.

I found myself in a halcyon days conversation with a friend recently where we were remarking on the good old days wherein one might hear a song played on the radio or in a club, and then spend anything from days to months attempting to find that song on vinyl or in some format where you could play it at any moment of your choosing. The point was simply that being denied these things, having to endure the friction of tracking these releases down meant that when you finally got it, you treasured it and you played it to death.

Ironically, friction is now taking another angle in the world of AI. I read this great article earlier (courtesy of my MU colleague Charlotte), suggesting that there is now increasing value in “showing your workings out”, that is, proving that a sufficient amount of friction went into the creation of something. The example in the article was Apple’s logo in a recent TV ident, which was not made with graphics and AI, but was crafted from sheets of glass:

TBWA\Media Arts Lab: Apple TV ident (Copyright © Apple, 2025) Source

As you can see then, our relationship with friction, our appreciation of it, is shifting. In the age of AI, friction is now a positive term. It proves that sufficient effort has gone into something, and that in turn is inherently connected with us valuing it all the more.

I wonder if that association with friction as a positive notion will also bleed out into the nature of how we consume arts and culture itself. Put simply, are we going to value something more when we have to work harder to get it?

The immediacy of everything feels like a tired concept now. One might say the same about the attention economy in general. Everything coming easily simply means nothing, and we are finding ourselves thirsting for more friction - and with that, significantly more reward when we finally obtain access to something.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see artists exploring this concept more through 2026. I would imagine the bigger acts will explore it first, as they have the audience there with demonstrable fandom, such that friction could be introduced gently and without significant negative effect.

Let’s see, though. Personally, I am excited to see how this will all turn out.

Have a great day,

D.

🎶 Listening to: Craven Faults - Sidings. The fine people at Leaf were kind enough to send me a promo of this, and I’ve been unable to stop playing it ever since I got it. With echoes of Pye Corner Audio, this has that hauntology sound going on, but for me it just totally hits the spot. I think I may even have told David at Leaf that it made me want to “turn out the lights, smoke a bowl, and sit there watching my retinas spewing sail light trails in the dark until I see dead kings.” So, well received, I think we can all agree! 😆

🎧 Listening to Craven Faults on my new Innioasis Y1 iPod clone. This thing is a total joy: a slim, entirely iPod-copying digital music player that works like a charm and cost me just £55. It sports bluetooth, USB-C, and plays MP3, FLAC and most other formats. I’m loving it! I especially like the battery life. In a world where we are used to charging our phones daily, the fact that this has only been charged once since I bought it about a week ago speaks volumes.

🤖 Playing with Monologue. Dictation tools are something I’ve always been interested in, but which have always come up short. Monologue, on the other hand, has perfectly hit the spot to such an extent that I’ve used it to dictate both this Network Notes and the last one. I think what separates it from the pack is that it uses a layer of AI to filter out the extraneous ‘ums’ and ‘errs’ that one can include when dictating, but which also recognises tone depending on which app you’re in. It’s incredibly smart and for me has been a massive productivity booster. Check it out.

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Postscript: this article was actually written last week, when I was stockpiling pieces to send out through coming days/weeks. Since finishing it, I was catching up on my own Substack subs, and realised that Maarten over at Music X had also written about friction. I feel our pieces line up well alongside one another, as his takes a deeper dive and perhaps a more philosophical take on the matter. Well worth your time. Have a read here.

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