TECHNOLOGY
Infinite Scroll
The 2006 interface pattern Aza Raskin designed in an afternoon to eliminate the bottom of the webpage — now estimated to consume 200,000 human lifetimes per day.
Infinite scroll is the interface pattern that loads new content automatically as the user approaches the bottom of a feed, eliminating pagination entirely. Designed by Aza Raskin in 2006 at Humanized, it solved an elegant problem: the bottom of a webpage was a seam — a visible joint where the machinery of the interface became apparent and the user was jolted into a moment of conscious choice about what to do next. Raskin smoothed the seam away. The content flowed continuously. The decision point vanished. Fifteen years later, its inventor became its most public critic, estimating that the pattern now consumes over 200,000 human lifetimes daily and testifying in court against the companies that deployed it most aggressively.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The design problem infinite scroll solved was real. In pre-2006 web interfaces, users reaching the end of a feed had to click next page, wait for a reload, and reorient themselves in a new context. This friction was, from a pure