{"id":22819,"date":"2026-04-23T04:37:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T02:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/23\/to-be-human-is-to-live-with-friction-thats-something-ai-boosters-will-never-understand-alexander-hurst\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T04:37:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T02:37:21","slug":"to-be-human-is-to-live-with-friction-thats-something-ai-boosters-will-never-understand-alexander-hurst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/23\/to-be-human-is-to-live-with-friction-thats-something-ai-boosters-will-never-understand-alexander-hurst\/","title":{"rendered":"To be human is to live with friction. That\u2019s something AI boosters will never understand | Alexander Hurst"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re being sold a world where there\u2019s no room for reflection or spontaneity. This is the Black Mirror stage of capitalism<\/p>\n

How fast do you have to strike a match to get it to light? Not the chemistry of the ignition, but the actual speed, in metres per second, that the little piece of wood and its bulbous head have to move to spark the chain reaction behind the flame.<\/p>\n

It was a question born of insomnia. And there, in the dark, <\/strong>I did the thing you\u2019re not supposed to do, if your goal is to fall back asleep: I opened my phone. Before I knew it, 3am had become 5am. I learned about the composition of the friction strip (red phosphorus, pulverized glass), and of the match head (potassium chlorate, antimony trisulphide, wax), and that a safety match struck against anything else will not light. I found slow-motion videos of a match strike captured at 3,500 frames per second. But nothing about the speed.<\/p>\n

Alexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir Generation Desperation<\/a> is out now<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nWe\u2019re being sold a world where there\u2019s no room for reflection or spontaneity. This is the Black Mirror stage of capitalism
\nHow fast do you have to strike a match to get it to light? Not the chemistry of the ignition, but the actual speed, in metres per second, that the little piece of wood and its bulbous head have to move to spark the chain reaction behind the flame.
\nIt was a question born of insomnia. And there, in the dark, I did the thing you\u2019re not supposed to do, if your goal is to fall back asleep: I opened my phone. Before I knew it, 3am had become 5am. I learned about the composition of the friction strip (red phosphorus, pulverized glass), and of the match head (potassium chlorate, antimony trisulphide, wax), and that a safety match struck against anything else will not light. I found slow-motion videos of a match strike captured at 3,500 frames per second. But nothing about the speed.
\nAlexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir Generation Desperation is out now Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re being sold a world where there\u2019s no room for reflection or spontaneity. This is the Black Mirror stage of capitalism How fast do you have to strike a match to get it to light? Not the chemistry of the ignition, but the actual speed, in metres per second, that the little piece of wood …<\/p>\n

To be human is to live with friction. That\u2019s something AI boosters will never understand | Alexander Hurst<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":22820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22819"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}