Notes on “Taste” | Are.na Editorial

Taste comes in lanes. To quote Susan Sontag again, “There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion — and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good vis... See more

Taste is about discovery, having interest in things, and making a lot of mistakes. It’s about trying to find the authentic set of choices that both reflect your own background, but also the choices and discoveries that you have made consciously and deliberately. It's always changing and it's also always in reflection of what everyone else is doing ... See more

Taste is the bone-deep feeling that you’ve made something good. It is a sense, inexplicable and ephemeral. But it’s also a tangible skill that’s increasingly essential. Taste is how a business differentiates itself when attention is scarce and choice is abundant. Knowing what to make is just as important as the ability to make it.

There’s an even b... See more

Developing Taste

When the first car came out, consumers didn't care about its color, or silhouette, because the competition was a horse.1 But now that cars have been commoditized, quality and details have become more important than ever.

The same applies to software. Simply shipping a product that works is no longer enough, everyone can do that, espe... See more

So, there’s the trick. The path to taste is really as simple as writing a little plus and minus in the margin more often. If we apply this to digital space, we can turn them from an overwhelming and chaotic bombardment into a steady stream of things we find beautiful, that in turn, can define our tastes. For me, Are.na is a space for this kind of c... See more