Cognitive Wallpaper #001: Field Notes on Productive Friction

We no longer live in a deterministic world. As I discussed last week, ours is a time of probabilistic inference via algorithms and LLMs, with smooth tools producing bad thinking. And as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago inconvenience is sometimes a feature, not a bug. If we remove every point of friction, then we remove the points where reflection happens.Cognitive Wallpaper – Issue 001: Field Notes on Productive Friction is a 40-page zine I'm working on about the textures of attention, the architecture of thought, and the patterns we mistake for productivity. It's going to contain eight patterns of digital capture, as noticing is the first step in doing something about it: Ambient nudging: modification of choice architecture in environments meaning that the user believes that they are operating under neutral conditionsDefault Capture: the process where a system retains access, data, or attention – not through active user consent, but the absence of an opt-out mechanismNotification…