Robin Good

High agency is such an important idea because the more agency an individual or society has -- the more problems they can solve.

High agency can be a confusing idea to understand because it’s not just one idea. It’s a combination of three distinct skills rarely found together:

1. Clear thinking


2. Bias to action


3. Disagreeability

"The most credible form of advertising comes straight from the people we know and trust. Eighty-three percent of online respondents in 60 countries say they trust the recommendations of friends and family". - Nielsen 2015

So that, I think, is the role of information curators: They are our curiosity sherpas, who lead us to things we didn’t know we were interested in until we, well, until we are. Until we pay attention to them — because someone whose taste and opinion we trust points us to them, and we integrate them with our existing pool of resources, and they... See more

But what I began to notice, through all of it, was that something felt increasingly off. Not just in my own experience, but in the culture surrounding it. What once felt full of possibility had started to feel constricted. The language of freedom was still there, but beneath it was a kind of pressure that didn’t feel creative at all.

There’s a... See more

Unlike influencers, curators do not lead with self-exposure, but with interpretation. A curator’s authority comes not from personal relatability, but from perspective, context, discernment, and intellectual labour that has since been lacking in recent social media years.

Curation is an act of illuminating [something that is not us].

The problem - and the reason the Vibe Coding Paradox comes up - is because we live in an age where it is possible to hack our way to attention without having to do the hard work needed to build trust.

With that, we misunderstand attention as value. But without trust, it really isn’t.

In an age of mass production, curation and taste matter more.

AI... See more