Wiki

A working reference for the imagination economy. The phrase has circulated since 2006 without ever being given a definition. These entries are the attempt to supply one, and to keep the vocabulary precise enough to argue with.

Core concepts

The load-bearing ideas of the imagination economy.

Director and orchestra

A model of the human–machine relation in which the human holds intent and the machine holds capability, and neither side is diminished.

Director mode

The posture of attending to a field of possible outcomes and choosing among them, as distinct from labouring over a single artifact.

The binding constraint

The step in a process that limits everything downstream of it. In the imagination economy, that step is specification rather than execution.

The cost collapse

The fall of the marginal cost of producing a competent artifact from significant to approximately nothing, between roughly 2022 and 2026.

The imagination economy

The economy that begins once the cost of producing an artifact falls to near zero and the binding constraint moves to knowing what should be made.

Methods and disciplines

The practices that decide who works well once execution is free.

Brief geometry

The shape of an instruction — how tightly it constrains, along which axes, and where it deliberately leaves room.

The comparative method

Working by generating many candidates and choosing among them, rather than by producing one artifact and refining it.

The five capacities of direction

Specificity of articulation, comparative judgement, reference fluency, constraint design and iteration discipline.

Measures

What can be counted, and what the counting is for.

The iso-line of recognition

The threshold at which a maker recognises a candidate as the thing they meant, rather than merely as an acceptable result.

History of the term

Twenty years of the phrase, and who used it before us.

History of the term

The phrase has recurred independently for twenty years, from a 2006 Fortune essay to a 2025 consultancy report, without ever receiving a definition.

Imagination Age

An adjacent term, introduced in the early 1990s and popularised from 2007, describing a period rather than an economic mechanism.

Sources and lineage

The thinkers the argument is built on.

Latent Cartography

The continuing atlas of plates that accompanies this work — visual arguments made in parallel with the prose rather than illustrations of it.

Core concepts

Director and orchestra

Director mode

The binding constraint

The cost collapse

The imagination economy

Methods and disciplines

Brief geometry

The comparative method

The five capacities of direction

Measures

The iso-line of recognition

History of the term

History of the term

Imagination Age

Sources and lineage

Latent Cartography

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