Signal Versus Slop
Tom Critchlow, imagining organisations as colonies:
This is where “workflow automation” feels too small and unimaginative. The opportunity is not to build faster, smaller machines - but to become a colony: a mixed population of humans, agents, bots, scripts, dashboards, workflows, alerts, memories and permissions, all sensing and acting through local signals.[...]
This is where “make 1,000 landing pages” gets interesting. The point is not 1,000 landing pages as slop. The point is whether the organization has the pheromone system to learn from 1,000 landing pages. Which variants attract attention? Which segments respond? Which claims create trust? Which messages produce confusion? Which pages should be killed? Which ones should reproduce?
The interesting organisational asset is not the swarm. It is the pheromone system.
Anyone can make 1,000 landing pages. AI just makes them cheaper and faster.
Knowing which attract attention, create trust, produce confusion, deserve to die or reproduce is organisational sensing.
Culturematics at organisational scale. Little machines for testing the world, connected by feedback loops that shape what your colony does next.
Without the pheromone system, 1,000 variants are slop. With it, they become signals.