Warnings against “efficiency” and “optimization” date back millennia

What started as a birthday reflection on living less “optimized” has turned into a rabbit hole: a cross-century search for who else has challenged the cult of efficiency. This post gathers those voices -from Sappho to the Luddites; hooks to Doctorow- into a living bibliography of unoptimization, an ongoing project I’ll keep expanding as new resonances and missing voices emerge.