Every frictionless transaction is a missed encounter. We built apps that let us skip the shopkeeper, the driver, the checkout line, and called it convenience. COVID briefly reminded us who was actually keeping things running, then we went right back to avoiding them.
We talk about polarization like it’s a political problem, but a lot of it is simpler: we’ve stopped bumping into people outside our own circle.
So if we’ve engineered away all the accidental encounters, where exactly is common ground supposed to come from?
