Less noise, more dream
In the age of AI overload I apply luxury principles—human, abundance, time—to publishing.
AI made me pause
This newsletter was meant to deliver concise, opinionated insights that fit around my day job. I no longer have the bandwidth for PhD-length essays and feared they’d lose you anyway.
After two posts the format felt flat. AI made it worse: instant, low-cost production lets anyone dump more content. Your inbox and social feeds are likely as flooded with AI-generated noise as mine.
My motivation shrank and my frustration grew.
Human and luxury as the antidote
Reading newsletters (e.g., Differentiated Design by Hans Lorei, Farnam Street by Shane Parrish) and talking to friends showed my the gap: There is a need for a human voice, opinion and taste, inherently personal, unpredictable, and polarising.
Luxury Strategy (2012) by Jean-Noël Kapferer and Vincent Bastien sharpened my lens: Luxury is relevant, and its ultimate goal is to create a dream:
the more people share a common dream, and
the fewer people can reach it,
the stronger is the allure of the dream.
I’m applying this logic to this newsletter:
Surface ideas, opinions and sources few have seen (“few had prior access”),
Let you spread them with your peers to reach more readers, create a dialogue (“enlarging the shared dream”),
grow the newsletter’s value as the dream scales.
What you get — and my rules
If the luxury concept applied to a newsletter, let me explore three key ingredients: human, abundance and time.
Human
…means skill, is creative, has flaws and a pithy opinion. It is opposite of the machine that is flawless, efficient, and average.
→ Sit down, write posts and refine the craft to develop a distinct, fallible voice that matters to you
Abundance
…means purposefully displaying opulence and generosity. Opulence (e.g., detailed workmanship, multi-sensory stimuli) is intended to radiate pleasure, culture and sophistication; it nourishes the dream. It is opposite of over-abundance, excess and grandiloquence, which lead to sensory overload, vulgarity and, ultimately, rejection (death) of the dream.
→ Carefully curate posts and choose words; add audio, images, or video to deepen a point. Sparse the frequency, rich the experience and avoid spam.
Time
…reflects the need to achieve results that are timeless rather than trend-driven. Time cannot be bought and is the ultimate rare resource. Lasting dreams require time to build. It lets things develop slowly and masterfully, nurtures heritage, and presents designs that are not meant to age, implying a feeling of timelessness and patience as a privilege. True excellence takes time and remains permanently relevant.
→ Aim for one post a month, each must compound the archive, not just add more. Publish durable content that ages well and nourishes the dream.
If you agree that less can be more, share this post.
If not, hit reply—let’s argue, my friends.
See you in July,
Friedemann