A tool has a tempo, even when it does not make a sound.
Some tools hurry us past the moment of decision. Others hold still long enough for a decision to become visible. The difference is not efficiency. It is whether the tool leaves room for a person to participate.
We have come to treat friction as a design failure. But some friction is simply the texture of care: the pause before a sentence is sent, the resistance of a key, the time it takes for a thought to arrive fully formed.
Slow tools are not nostalgic objects. They are instruments that return time to the user. They make fewer promises and keep more of them.
The question is not whether a tool can disappear. It is whether, in disappearing, it also makes the person disappear from the work.