Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I (1514) depicts a winged figure—often read as the personification of melancholy or contemplative genius—seated in stillness amid an arsenal of instruments: compass, scales, hourglass, a magic square, and unfinished geometric forms. The scene is dense with the machinery of measurement and making, yet the central figure does not act. Instead, she pauses—absorbed, restrained, and watchful—as if the world's tools have reached their limit and judgement must take over. It is an image of disciplined hesitation: capability held in reserve until thought catches up with possibility.
Good evening, and welcome to this edition of The Scribbler—a newsletter that circles one organisational problem until it shows itself.
This month's thread is simple: the modern organisation is running out of friction.
Friction is what lets you steer. Remove it and you get speed, not control. In an era of AI-assisted writing, instant analytics, and industrial-scale content production, friction is being stripped out of organisational life. There are fewer pauses, fewer evidentiary gates, fewer principled refusals, and—if we are honest—less care taken with language. The result is not efficiency. It is skid risk.
