Working definition. Friction is the effort, delay, or interruption that prevents an action from becoming automatic.
Inherited meaning
Engineering treats friction as energy lost; digital product culture therefore learned to remove it. Yet law, ceremony, craft, and education preserve useful friction because some moments deserve reflection, skill, witness, or consent.
Meaning in the imagination economy
AI can compress the distance between impulse and consequence almost to zero. That is valuable for exploration and dangerous for irreversible action. In the imagination economy, good friction marks the places where human agency must re-enter: before publishing, delegating authority, reproducing a likeness, or changing another person’s world.
What changes in practice
Remove effort from reversible exploration. Add pauses, previews, reasons, and human confirmation where action becomes public or consequential. Judge friction by what it protects, not by whether it slows a metric.