Paradoxical Friction

tecnofuct

I would very much like a word to describe the phenomenon that happens when technology is supposed to make something smoother, and reduce friction, but in fact does the opposite.

For example– my car is equipped with Apple CarPlay. This allows my iPhone to communicate with the vehicle and its navigation system.

What should happen, is that I should be able to ask the iPhone’s quote-unquote intelligent agent, Siri, to navigate someplace. What ends up happening, in reality, is that about half the time, what I says gets garbled, and the car starts giving me directions to someplace I haven’t asked to go. I then find myself, often moving at highway speed, trying to clear this made-up location out of the navigation, which is dangerous and stressful.

If there was no navigation on the vehicle at all, I would just figure out where I was going beforehand. If the navigation was intrinsic to the vehicle, it would probably be more seamless. But here’s an example of something technological that is supposed to work, and instead of making my life easier, it actually increases my stress response.

The same thing happens on a regular basis when I direct it to phone somebody. I would say about 20% of the time it calls the wrong person. I say, Call Jeffrey Blake. It says, Calling Jeff Rockwood. Again, since I’m driving, this now sends me scrambling to hang up the phone, both stressful and dangerous.

Another example: in order to save time responding to somebody’s text, you dictate it. And then a minute later realize that the AI agent listening has had you utter some-thing fucking ridiculous.

iPHONE: I am a dick ate this message now. –SEND IT?

ME (pulling out my hair): Dictating. I said ‘dictating.’

And then you have to stop whatever you’re doing and manually apologize and fix the text.

Techno fuckd.

Every time it fails, I briefly experience MUCH greater friction then if the thing didn’t exist in the first place. I’d like a word for that feeling of being tecnofuct.

In other news, thanks to everyone who helped us move through inventory of Restorative Practices of Wellbeing before the closure of our warehouse. We’ve sold a few hundred copies in the past couple months, which is very helpful. We’ve taken the hardcover off our store temporarily as we figure out fulfillment. All other books are available, as well as a paperback version of Restorative Practices of Wellbeing. ALL OUR BOOKS ARE HERE.

I have been cranking in this department. We will be releasing a book every couple of months for the next six months at least. In October Beyond Polyvagal Theory: Phenomenology of an Embodied Neuroscience arrives. In December, GROUND: How Modernity Disconnected from the Earth, Why it Matters, & How to Fix It. We’ve sent out our first Advanced Reader copies, and the first feedback I received is [this is a literal quote]: “I am 2/3 of the way through GROUND. THAT is a crazy fucking book. Absolutely phenomenal. Really really incredible. Something in the planets is working right now, it seems.”

When I printed the 3rd draft to make physical edits on a physical copy for the fourth draft (the fourth draft is what we sent out as ARCs), I had a very strange experience reading the book. My only rule during the writing of the book itself was that every time I sat down to write it, I would take off my shoes, put my feet on the earth, and wait for the text to arrive as a transmission. In Lakota, this way of knowing is called anamagoptanye, and it was translated for me as, “The earth is constantly uploading information to you.”

When I went back to read the draft, I kept having this experience of being totally immersed in what I was reading, and not being able to remember what had been preceding it, even by just a few minutes. I had written the book (ostensibly), and I had been through it many times, but to read it there was this very strange way in which it arose and fell away almost immediately. My body hovered in some kind of relentless present moment, anchored. There was no horizon.

I kept having an experience of the text, not a reading of it. I think (perhaps) this is what our reader was referring to. Madame M– if I’m wrong, tell us why in the comments.

Late January we’ll release our collaboration with Darcia Narvaez: Restoring Human Nature: a neuro-ontology of the ancestral future. It has me thinking about the sovereignty of babyhood (Darcia’s notion), because this is where the sovereignty we want to cultivate begins. We are having so much fun dialoging that book into existence. You’re gonna like it very much…

Finally… here’s a teaser of something else that seems to be arriving.