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

living ideaunoptimized2025

Aug 26

For my 43 birthday post, I wrote about the myths of optimization - and how I’d like to live a bit more unoptimized going forward.

This catalyzed a deeper inquiry into who else has warned of optimization as a threat to critical aspects of our humanity (read: major rabbit hole and cue the “seeing it everywhere now” frequency illusion I’ve been living in, s/o to recent blog posts from Cory Doctorow and a 3-part TikTok series from Eugene Healey).

And in a twist of irony, I used an optimization tool (AI in the form of ChatGPT5) to help me build out a reading list for who else has come about similar conclusions - i.e. warning us that in the pursuit of efficiency, we risk our humanity. And, as I build this out, I am most interested in two additional layers of inference:

What was going on, historically / contextually, that gave rise to these declarations? What might we learn about our moment now, with the context from ‘back when’?
Put in conversation, what universal truths emerge for us to heed?

I hope to continue to press into this pursuit and pause to share what I learn along the way.

The History of Unoptimization

Source: Deep Research, ChatGPT5
Date Retrieved: August 23–24 + August 26, 2025

Author’s note: There are a great number of voices missing from the early centuries — namely: women, people of color, and queer folk. My money is on these groups leading conversations in their communities and likely being either (1) silenced or punished (e.g. Salem Witch Trials) and / or (2) appropriated aka having their ideas ‘culture vultured’ aka “Christopher Columbused” by white, cis, straight men. I put this note through GPT5 after an initial list was generated and published on August 23; then generated new additions under ** entries below on Aug 26.

Classical Antiquity

Aristotle. Politics. 4th century BCE.
→ Critiques accumulation for its own sake, upholds balance over optimization.
Cicero. De Officiis. 44 BCE.
→ Stresses virtue and duty above expediency.
**Sappho. Fragments. 7th–6th c. BCE.
→ Lyric poetry foregrounding eros, embodiment, and emotion against patriarchal rationalism.
**Hypatia of Alexandria. Letters and Commentaries. 4th–5th c. CE.
→ Mathematician and philosopher murdered by a Christian mob; symbol of resisting doctrinal “optimization” of knowledge.
**The Desert Mothers (Amma Syncletica, Amma Sarah, 4th c. CE).
→ Early monastic women who advocated frictional ascetic practices over worldly ease.

** added after going back and forth with GPT5, see note above as to the why.

Medieval Thought

The Rule of St. Benedict. 6th century.
→ Monastic guide emphasizing moderation and rhythm.
** Hildegard of Bingen. Scivias. 1151.
→ Visionary theologian critiquing clerical corruption; offered ecological and cosmic visions at odds with rigid scholastic order.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. 1274.
→ Affirms dignity of labor and justice over efficiency logics.
** Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love. c. 1395.
→ First known book in English by a woman; insists on divine love and patience over hierarchical control.
**Margery Kempe. The Book of Margery Kempe. c. 1430s.
→ Autobiography of a mystic woman; punished for heresy, insisted on lay female spiritual authority.

Renaissance & Early Modern

**Teresa of Ávila. The Interior Castle. 1577.
→ Mystical resistance to rigid religious structures, emphasizing embodied, nonlinear paths to the divine.
Michel de Montaigne. Essays. 1580.
→ Celebrates idleness, digression, and uncertainty against rigid systems.
Francis Bacon. Novum Organum. 1620.
→ Advocates scientific method yet warns against premature systematization.
Blaise Pascal. Pensées. 1670.
→ Resists rationalist reduction, affirming limits and faith.
**Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Respuesta a Sor Filotea. 1691.
→ Mexican nun and poet; feminist defense of women’s education against patriarchal silencing.
**Mary Astell. A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. 1694.
→ Early feminist call for women’s intellectual communities, critiquing marriage as optimization of women’s labor.

18th Century

Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. 1750.
→ Argues progress and refinement corrupt freedom and virtue.
Adam Smith. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 1759.
→ Markets must remain grounded in sympathy and morality.
**Phillis Wheatley. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. 1773.
→ Considered the first published African American woman poet; used neoclassical form to subvert slavery and colonial “rationalization.”
**Olaudah Equiano. The Interesting Narrative. 1789.
→ Autobiography of a formerly enslaved African; exposes the dehumanizing economic logics of the slave trade and argues for abolition.
Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France. 1790.
→ Rejects rationalist re-engineering, defends slow organic change.
**Mary Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 1792.
→ Argues against the reduction of women to ornamental efficiency in service of men.

19th Century

Writings of the Luddites. 1811–1816.
→ Collective letters and proclamations resisting industrial machine optimization.
**Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. 1845.
→ Autobiography detailing Douglass’s life under slavery, his self-education, and his escape to freedom.
**Sojourner Truth. Ain’t I a Woman? Speech, 1851.
→ Speech delivered at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, challenging prevailing ideas of racial and gender inferiority.
Henry David Thoreau. Walden. 1854.
→ Advocates simplicity and deliberate living against industrial acceleration.
William Morris. News from Nowhere. 1890.
→ Utopian vision privileging craft and beauty over standardization.

Early 20th Century

**W. E. B. Du Bois. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903.
→ Collection of essays introducing the concept of “double consciousness” and analyzing the social and spiritual condition of African Americans after emancipation.
**Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays. 1910.
→ Essays critiquing state authority, capitalism, marriage, and conventional morality, while defending individual freedom and creativity.
G. K. Chesterton. What’s Wrong with the World. 1910.
→ Catholic critique of utilitarian “progress.”
Mohandas K. Gandhi. Hind Swaraj. 1909 (Eng. 1910).
→ Anti-industrial, anti-colonial call for swadeshi self-reliance.
Lewis Mumford. Technics and Civilization. 1934.
→ History of technology warning against the “megamachine.”
Jacques Maritain. Integral Humanism. 1936.
→ Personalist vision defending dignity against technocracy.

Mid-20th Century

F. A. Hayek. The Road to Serfdom. 1944.
→ Warns centralized optimization leads to authoritarianism.
Karl Polanyi. The Great Transformation. 1944.
→ Analyzes how disembedded markets destabilize society.
George Orwell. Essays (1940s).
→ Critiques propaganda, standardization, and industrial food.
Simone Weil. Gravity and Grace. 1952.
→ Mystical reflections on attention and labor beyond mechanization.
**Hannah Arendt. The Human Condition. 1958.
→ Explores distinctions between labor, work, and action, warning that technological modernity risks diminishing the public realm of action.
**Frantz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. 1961.
→ Exposes how colonial regimes sought to “systematize” and control entire populations, insisting on radical rupture from those imposed orders.

1960s–1970s

Jacques Ellul. The Technological Society. 1964.
→ Shows how efficiency becomes society’s highest value.
Guy Debord. The Society of the Spectacle. 1967.
→ Exposes the reduction of life to images and appearances.
Albert Hirschman. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. 1970.
→ Introduces “voice” as friction against decline.
**Ivan Illich. Tools for Conviviality. 1973.
→ Argues for limits on industrial and technological systems, promoting “convivial tools” that enhance autonomy and community control.
E. F. Schumacher. Small Is Beautiful. 1973.
→ Advocates small-scale human-centered economics.
Wendell Berry. The Unsettling of America. 1977.
→ Agrarian defense of local culture against industrial farming.
Christopher Lasch. The Culture of Narcissism. 1979.
→ Critiques consumer society and self-optimization.
**Angela Y. Davis. Women, Race, and Class. 1981 (developed from 1970s lectures).
→ Examines the intersections of race, gender, and class in American history, particularly within the women’s rights and labor movements.

1980s

Audre Lorde. Sister Outsider. 1984.
→ Essays on difference and embodiment as resistance.
Donna Haraway. “A Cyborg Manifesto.” 1985.
→ Embraces hybridity against optimized binaries.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind. 1986.
→ Calls for resisting linguistic and cultural optimization.
Gloria Anzaldúa. Borderlands/La Frontera. 1987.
→ Frames mestiza consciousness as unoptimized hybridity.

1990s

Judith Butler. Gender Trouble. 1990.
→ Shows gender categories as performative, not fixed binaries.
bell hooks. Teaching to Transgress. 1994.
→ Advocates education as liberatory friction.
Mark Dery. “Black to the Future.” 1994.
→ Coins “Afrofuturism” as speculative resistance.
William Strauss and Neil Howe. The Fourth Turning. 1997.
→ Argues history moves in cycles; over-optimized systems collapse during crisis, making way for renewal.
Kodwo Eshun. More Brilliant than the Sun. 1998.
→ Reads Black music as temporal disruption and resistance.

2000s

Levine, Rick, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger. The Cluetrain Manifesto. 2000.
→ Internet manifesto resisting corporate control of online dialogue.
Judith Butler. Frames of War. 2009.
→ Argues optimization frames decide which lives are grievable.

2010s

Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Antifragile. 2012.
→ Defends volatility and slack against over-optimization.
Fred Moten and Stefano Harney. The Undercommons. 2013.
→ Advocates fugitive planning outside optimized institutions.
Robin Wall Kimmerer. Braiding Sweetgrass. 2013.
→ Offers Indigenous reciprocity as alternative to extraction.
Roger Scruton, Green Philosophy. 2012.
→ Argues for environmental stewardship rooted in tradition, piety, and localism rather than techno-optimism or progressive policy.
Ytasha Womack. Afrofuturism. 2013.
→ Primer on Black speculative futures.
Nnedi Okorafor. Binti. 2015.
→ Africanfuturist story of hybridity and survival.
Pope Francis. Laudato Si’. 2015.
→ Religious manifesto against the technocratic paradigm.
Winona LaDuke. Recovering the Sacred. 2016.
→ Argues for Indigenous sovereignty and spiritual defense.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. As We Have Always Done. 2017.
→ Insists on Indigenous temporalities and resurgence.
David Graeber. Bullshit Jobs. 2018.
→ Exposes the waste of efficiency producing meaningless work.

2020s

Richard Hughes Gibson. “An Appeal for Friction Writing.” The Hedgehog Review, Feb 1, 2021.
→ Calls for slowing down and cultivating friction in writing as counter to digital efficiency.
Cory Doctorow. The Internet Con. 2023.
→ Argues for reclaiming computation from monopolistic optimization.
Leslie Bradshaw. “Unoptimized.” May 18, 2025.
→ Personal manifesto rejecting algorithmic and self-optimization.
Strange Loop Canon. “Silicon Valley’s Quest to Remove Friction from Our Lives.” June 9, 2025.
→ Critiques convenience culture as eroding agency and resilience.
Alexandria Ng. “The Essential Role of ‘Friction’ in Student-Facing Artificial Intelligence Products.” EdWeek Market Brief, June 27, 2025.
→ Argues classroom AI must preserve friction to foster judgment.
Guirat, Iness Ben, and Jan Tobias Mühlberg. Resistance Technologies: Moving Beyond Alternative Designs. arXiv preprint, Aug 7, 2025.
→ Proposes protective technologies designed around friction and resistance.
Cory Doctorow. “Become unoptimizable.” Aug 20, 2025.
→ Critiques billionaire-driven optimization and surveillance infantilism.
Cory Doctorow. “Friction Cannot Be Reduced, It Can Only Be Redistributed.” Aug 23, 2025.
→ Calls for re-centering friction as political redistribution.
Eugene Healey. The Importance of Friction. Three-part TikTok series, Aug 20–25, 2025.
→ Argues friction is key to agency and perspective in the AI era.

I have organized the above mentioned works in bibliography form here: https://www.lesliebradshaw.com/the-idea-garden/a-reading-list-for-aspiring-unoptimizers

frictionefficiencyoptimizationunoptimized2025history

Leslie Bradshaw