Email was always an externally writable database—agents are breaking the attention economy
signulll · x · 2026-10-30
signulll offers a counterintuitive frame: email was always an externally writable database masquerading as a communication tool—spam thrived because anyone with your address could insert a record and demand your attention. Agents break this relationship by mediating the inbox. Implications for the attention economy are large: a 100k-subscriber newsletter or any form of email marketing is worth less than ever before.
More from AGI Musings
- Zeb Anderson on AI access: as broad as possible, with different boundaries for children — sierracatalina · 2026-10-30
- VC takes: the biggest moats right now are philosophy, people skills, and defense tech — moonsandhues · 2026-10-30
- Is sycophantic AI inflating research publications? Two mechanisms worth questioning — KLdivergence · 2026-10-30
- DeepMind launches AGI economics research program with "The Economics of Intelligence" — soumitrashukla9 · 2026-10-30
- ML veteran Pedro Domingos works in the field labs most want to automate — and feels zero threat — pmddomingos · 2026-10-30
- Essay critiques Anthropic: making machines moral treats faith as a technology — floguo · 2026-10-30