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When I think about flow vs friction, what comes to mind is typography's crystal gobelet — the debate between stylistic choices as opposed to legibility is as old as recorded media, and I know the debate about the decline of humanity's mental capacities with the introduction of new media has been around since Socrates denounced writing as an unfit mode of communication.
I often wonder what the internet would look like if it had been made recently, as in if it'd been created with the technology we have now. Perhaps we'd have ways of navigating it that are unfathomable to us now simply because the internet as we know it is the result of decades of innovation and reinvention.


Every social media ever has mostly been about finding interesting ways of communicating with other humans. I can't think of any "social" media that doesn't revolve around communication in some way. And with the subjectivity of communication comes the biases of those who created those channels of human connection and sharing. I was drawn to the arguments made in Glitching the Master's House, where "the simultaneous empowerment and disempowerment that Black people face in cyberspace, which of course mimics what is experienced offline [... is] never divorced from what happens when we [Black people] walk out on the streets." As objective as we think the internet might be, and in spite of its anonymity, it's still bound by the rules that govern the physical world. On the internet, everyone is a white man.
I think this plays into flow vs friction because while flow attempts to create a seamless experience for everyone, it’s still affected by the interpretations of what “seamless” is from its creator and receivers. Likewise, what one defines as friction might be completely foreign to someone else. The experience of navigating the internet if you’re not a white man is already vastly different from if you are, and I can only imagine what the internet would’ve been like had POC and (beyond the computational work they used to do) women had been given the upper hand.


Would we be using a trackpad/mouse and keyboard, or would each computer be outfitted with an eye sensor that would detect your eye movements and move accordingly? Would we need both hands to type? Better yet, would there be ways to experience the web without even looking at a screen? (this plays into accessibility as well!)



As a designer, this plays into some of my work because I try to hold in mind the audience that might view it, even if that audience could be any internet stranger. However, if I know that not a lot of people are going to be looking at what I make, or if it’s made in a classroom setting, I know that I can have more of a wild time with my design. It all depends on context — the one thing that I do try to keep consistent, though, is a design process that’s infused with the warmth of an open mind.