Abstract

The felt sense that we inhabit a convenience economy and culture is by now widespread. Nested in this understanding are ideas about ease and comfort, perpetually new technologies, and empowered consumers, on the one hand, and growing inequalities and frictions between the speed and exhaustion that convenience engenders, on the other. Popular critics of Big Tech such as Tim Wu name this the ‘tyranny of convenience’, where the adoption of modern conveniences like the washing machine or the smartphone has the ‘ability to make other options unthinkable’. Academic and journalistic assessments of the rise of platforms like Amazon, Netflix, and Uber, but also Meituan, Grab, Jio, LINE, WeChat, Gozem, and Flipkart, among many others, paint a similar portrait. [Abstract from first paragraph of chapter].