A Frictionless Life?

As this article in the Atlantic points out, the holy grail of voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or the Echo is “frictionlessness”: the thing is so easy to use and talk to that you don’t notice that you are talking to it. Its so easy!

But the question is, do we want a frictionless life? Is there room for meaning in a frictionless life? Is there room for God? What if the opposite of a friction-ful life isn’t frictionless-ness, but despair? What if the thorns and thistles of life are in some strange way also a blessing, in that they keep us from believing we could do life on our own, apart from the source of life?

Friction between a car and a guardrail is a good thing… it keeps the occupants from the abyss below the road.