An Interview with Ian Bogost on Dematerialization and the Sensory World
The first StrictlyVC of 2026 hits San Francisco on April 30, with tickets going fast. Ticket savings of up to $190 end June 26, and over 1,000 founders and VCs are expected for an all-day bootcamp. On June 28, 2026, TechCrunch published an interview with writer, designer, and academic Ian Bogost about his forthcoming book, The Small Stuff. In the conversation, Bogost explores how technology and other modern forces have dematerialized our daily lives and how we can reclaim sensory experience.
The Concept of Dematerialization
Bogost defines dematerialization as the idea that we have become disconnected from the sensory world due to convenience technologies, but also bureaucracy, efficiency, economics, and regulatory apparatuses. “All sorts of factors — not just tech, and certainly not just Silicon Valley-style technology — have distanced people from the world that they inhabit, they have stripped away the texture of everyday life,” he explained. His favorite example is the automated airport restroom: toilets that flush automatically, sinks that turn on, and soap dispensers that often don’t work. This dematerialization happens so slowly that we don’t notice the tradeoff between progress and our connection to the material world.
From Stick Shift to Sensory Meaning
The genesis of the book came from a 2022 article Bogost wrote about the decline of the stick shift. The enormous response made him realize that ordinary life is deeply meaningful. “I just find ordinary life very, very alluring,” he said, noting that the stick shift is imbued with symbolic and real meaning. This led him to explore why we undervalue everyday experiences.
The Tradeoff Between Convenience and Experience
Bogost acknowledges that life is overall better due to services like Uber, Spotify, and DoorDash, but we didn’t fully understand the deal. “We did not fully account for the fact that we are physical beings, we are embodied beings,” he said. He criticizes the Silicon Valley obsession with efficiency, automation, and invisibility, which strips away experiential value. He contrasts his approach with more angry critiques, such as those from Cory Doctorow or Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing, saying he is “a little bored with the constant critique” and that it often misdiagnoses the problem.
Silicon Valley’s Misguided Focus on Outcomes
Bogost urges product builders to value the experience of using products, not just outcomes. He points out that earlier computing culture (from the 1960s to the 1990s) prioritized human factors and embodied interaction, but that was lost in the 2000s. “The experience of doing something is also important,” he said, noting that today’s entrepreneurs are quick to automate or offload tasks, forgetting that those experiences make us human.
Reclaiming the Small Stuff Without Nostalgia
Bogost warns against pure nostalgia or a “hipster reclamation” of analog culture. “We’re not going back,” he said. Instead, he encourages finding gratification in present sensory experiences, like the sonic quality of Zoom compared to a compressed telephone line. He also distinguishes between friction and experience: “You don’t really want things to be hard… You just want the experience of feeling yourself doing them.” He believes ordinary people don’t need to wait for major societal changes to start noticing the small stuff — they can do it now, in their everyday lives.
The book The Small Stuff is published by Simon & Schuster and is structured with a first half diagnosing dematerialization and a second half offering antidotes. Bogost hopes that leaders in industry, government, and civic organizations will also build more gratifying opportunities for sensory experience, but he emphasizes that individuals can start reclaiming their lives immediately.