For more than two decades, the defining promise of Silicon Valley has been the relentless elimination of friction. We have been sold a vision of the future where the best service is one that requires almost no personal attention whatsoever—a world of digital taps, automated check-ins, QR code menus, and algorithms designed to anticipate our every preference before we even articulate them. The underlying premise was simple: efficiency is the ultimate upgrade, and human contact, with all its inherent unpredictability and delay, is merely an inefficiency waiting to be engineered away.
Yet, as automation permeates nearly every corner of daily life—from the ubiquitous smartphone chatbot to self-checkout kiosks—a quiet counter-revolution is taking shape at the highest echelons of society. At the very top end of the market, the trend is increasingly reversing. In a world where anyone can access a 24-hour artificial intelligence helper on their phone, the ultra-wealthy and discerning consumers are turning away from seamless digital convenience. Instead, they are actively seeking out what technology was designed to destroy: human friction, deliberate slowness, and genuine personal attention.
This cultural shift has given rise to a new concept known as “friction-maxxing,” a term coined by Kathryn Jezer-Morton of The Cut in an article that went viral at the start of the year. The philosophy is straightforward: it involves intentionally doing things the old-fashioned way, resisting the proliferation of time-saving technologies, and actively preserving meaningful, unoptimized human experiences.
Legendary London restaurateur Jeremy King often illustrates this tension by recounting a speech he once delivered to his employees. “I could replace you all with robots,” he told his staff. “They’re never late, they’re not constantly surreptitiously looking at their phones, they don’t forget anything, they don’t call in hungover.” But he immediately followed with the crucial caveat: “But I’m not going to. Because they also have no empathy, no instinct, no intuition, and they can’t love.”
This philosophy cuts straight to the heart of what modern luxury has become. Technology promised to remove human friction, but for the economic elite, friction is often the entire point. It is embodied by a restaurant maître d’ who remembers your preferred table without looking at a screen, a bespoke tailor who insists on three separate fittings rather than taking a quick digital scan, a hotel manager who knows your mother’s name, or a handwritten note dropped in the mail. Platforms and apps were ostensibly meant to make life seamless, but in practice, they have frequently made it anonymous and deeply lonely.
The economics of luxury have always operated on a different logic than mass-market efficiency. If the sole purpose of dinner were simply to be fed, the best restaurant would be the one that got you out the door the fastest. If the purpose of buying a suit were merely obtaining clothing to cover oneself, three distinct fittings would represent terrible, inefficient service. Luxury deliberately and defiantly refuses that logic, placing its value precisely in the time, attention, and care lavished upon the client by another human being.
M.I.T. professor Sherry Turkle, author of Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines, views this return to human friction as an inevitable psychological correction. Wealth, she notes, has historically always searched out scarcity.
“When wealth associated hi-tech with a new form of attention, they dreamed of robots that would answer their every whim and take them out of the world of needing a lower class of caregivers,” Turkle explains. “It was friction-free, you wouldn’t have to rub up against strangers. Now, as nearly everyone has a 24-hour helper on their phone, a chatbot who will pretend to care, we dream of the truly scarce: human beings who really care.”
At the higher end of the modern market, human interaction itself has transformed into a luxury good. This dynamic speaks to what Rory Sutherland, author and president emeritus of Ogilvy Consulting, describes as “the doorman fallacy.” Sutherland often points to the hypothetical management consultant who looks at the traditional role of a hotel doorman, defines it narrowly as someone who simply pushes open a heavy door, and promptly replaces them with a cost-saving automated sensor.
“The only problem with this is that doormen, in reality, create value in all manner of different ways,” Sutherland observes. “They hail taxis, they recognize frequent guests, they perform a measure of security, and they exchange important information with other doormen on potentially criminal guests. Consequently, the management consultants would often lay claim to the cost savings when they installed the automatic door, but they weren’t around to suffer the consequences.”
What society has witnessed over the past few years is a systematic replacement of what sociologists call “weak ties”—the casual acquaintances, friendly neighbors, local shop assistants, and loose professional networks that provide low-stakes, everyday social contact. For a long time, these interactions were viewed by efficiency experts as expendable clutter. Yet, it is increasingly clear that these modest interactions are profoundly important, and perhaps even invaluable, to human happiness. The market is slowly realizing that far from being without value, these routine human touches are precisely what deliver real satisfaction and meaning.
This realization is not lost on those who manage premier hospitality brands. Marie-Louise Sciò, creative director and chief executive officer of Pellicano Hotels, acknowledges that technology has played a vital role in modern hospitality over the past decade, streamlining operations and making the guest experience more efficient behind the scenes.
“Digital tools have transformed the way we book, communicate, and manage hotels, and they continue to be incredibly valuable—especially behind the scenes,” Sciò notes. However, she is quick to emphasize the limits of digital transformation. “As technology has become more present, it has also reminded us of the importance of preserving the human side of hospitality. [It] can support us, but it cannot replace intuition, empathy, or the feeling of being genuinely looked after by another person.”
In a cultural landscape dominated by relentless technical advancement and the promise of automated ease, the trajectory of modern consumer habits offers a surprising twist. Who could have predicted that in an era of advanced artificial intelligence and ubiquitous digital connectivity, the greatest luxury of all would simply be a pleasant, unhurried conversation with another human being?
