I read a thought-provoking article by Joan Westenberg this morning. She makes the case that many of the ways technology brings convenience to our lives come at the cost of our curiosity. If we don’t have to work as hard to get something, will we value it as much? And what do we miss out on by not having to go down blind alleys—the false starts and tangents that curiosity thrives on?
Here are two segments that especially stood out:
…in the real world, knowledge is earned through movement. Friction. Ambiguity. The old experience of falling into a stack of books at the library wasn’t efficient, but that was hardly the point. You’d go in looking for one answer and come out with five better questions. That’s how curiosity thrives: in the space between expected and unexpected, between map and territory.
And then:
We don’t need more information. We have oceans of it. What we need are tools that reintroduce friction in thoughtful ways. Interfaces that don’t just answer us, but provoke us. Not to make things harder for the sake of it—to remind us that adult curiosity is not a default state. It must be cultivated. And right now, the culture of convenience is starving it.
