I think the strangest thing by far, reading tech optimists and boosters, is that even at their most dystopian, they lack the imagination to consider the profoundly alienating, boring, or otherwise inefficient and frustrating possibilities of prospective technologies.

It’s as if they look at the internet today and just see efficiency, frictionless transactions, and a thousand apps of convenience—rather than a thousand apps of maddening exhaustion, too many transactions to keep up with, and inefficiencies all the way down. In other words, something like the tyranny of the inbox. I don’t use email because, on balance, I consider it preferable to snail mail. I use it because I must. And I’ve never met a soul who loves email.