Construct · 6 fields · 12 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
● jingle · one name, six constructs Nearest construct by meaningsearchcompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to friction is search.
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The force that resists relative motion between two surfaces in contact, acting tangent to the interface and opposite to the motion or the tendency to move. Amontons in 1699 and Coulomb in 1781 fixed the three working laws: the force is proportional to the normal load, independent of the apparent contact area, and roughly independent of sliding speed. Bowden and Tabor showed in 1950 why: real contact happens at a few asperities, so the true area scales with load. Friction here is neither good nor bad. It is a number, the coefficient μ, and it is what makes walking and braking possible.[1][2]
The accumulation of countless small difficulties (fatigue, weather, error, chance, fear) that makes the simplest thing in war difficult and the real army fall short of the paper army. Clausewitz named it in On War and said it was the one concept that most distinguishes real war from war on paper. Watts argued in 1996 that it is not an artefact of nineteenth-century communications but a structural feature of any contest between adaptive opponents under uncertainty. This is the first borrowing of the mechanics word, and the only one that treats friction as irreducible rather than removable.[3][4]
The awkward, unequal, unstable engagement across difference through which global connection actually happens, the rubbing of universals against particular places that produces movement, and not only resistance. Tsing fixed the meaning in 2005 with an ethnography of Indonesian rainforest politics: capital, environmentalism and state power only travel by catching on local conditions, as a wheel only turns by gripping the road. Friction here is neither a cost nor a defect but the condition of motion. It is the one meaning on this page in which more friction can mean more happening.[5]
Any cost of making an exchange beyond the price, finding a partner, negotiating, writing and enforcing a contract. Coase argued in 1937 that firms exist because these costs of using the price mechanism are real, and Williamson built transaction-cost economics on them in 1979. In macroeconomics the same word names the time and effort it takes workers and jobs to find each other; the Mortensen–Pissarides matching model of 1994 makes unemployment the equilibrium consequence of search friction. In both traditions friction explains why markets do not clear instantly and why institutions exist to economise on it.[6][7][8]
The steps, delays, form fields and decisions a system places between a user and the thing they came to do. The construct is older than the word: Davis fixed perceived ease of use in 1989 as the degree to which using a system is free of effort, and it has been the standard antecedent of adoption ever since. In online retail the same idea is measured at the checkout, where Kukar-Kinney and Close showed that the cost and hassle of completing a purchase predicts cart abandonment. Friction here is always a loss to be engineered out; a "frictionless" system is the stated goal.[9][10]
Effort that a choice architect adds or removes on purpose to steer behaviour. Thaler named the dark twin of the nudge in 2018: sludge is friction that stops people getting what they want or getting out of what they do not, from cancellation mazes to rebate forms. Sunstein's sludge audit in 2020 asks institutions to count the paperwork, waiting time and psychological cost their processes impose. What distinguishes this meaning is that friction is a design variable with a sign: the same speed bump is a nudge when it protects the user and sludge when it exploits them.[11][12]
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