Until you look at the system.

Kevin Wilson wrote a great short story about the workers who have to sort the tiles that go into a Scrabble box. The hero is responsible for searching through the pile for the letter ‘q’. All day. On commission.

At this absurd level, it’s clear that the game isn’t made this way. They’d never produce all 26 letters, mix them up and then sort them. It pays to be thoughtful about the production process, so you simply make what you need in the first place.

But now, particularly with digital output, we’re doing it backwards. Making lots of stuff and then sorting it later. There’s very little cost to making more, and it’s getting more and more time-consuming to find what we’re looking for.

We’re replacing the magic of Google’s ability to sort through the miscellaneous with a new system based on simply making more, on demand.

Trust and attention remain the building blocks of brands and culture. We ignore this at our peril. There are no good shortcuts.