Taste Is Eating Silicon Valley.

Like many writers before me, I tend to lean on vague hand-waving when the need to define taste, or rather, good taste, arises. A common trope is to use the phrase US Supreme Court justice Stewart famously gave to describe obscenity, a similarly hard-to-describe bedfellow of taste, in 1964: “I know it when I see it.” In design, good taste can be kno... See more

Taste has historically been reserved for conversation about things like fashion and art. Now, we look for it in our social media feeds, the technology we use, the company we keep, and the people we hire.

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

Taste is eating software. Taste is the new weapon.

Whether in design, branding, or user experience, taste now defines how a product is perceived and felt as well as how it is adopted, i.e. distributed (whether it’s software or hardware or both). Technology has become deeply intertwined with culture. People now engage with technology as part of their... See more

Taste is easily defined as the ability to discriminate between the valuable and the expandable. It’s another word for Good Judgment. When you decide whether to eat sushi or calamari for dinner, you're in fact erecting a hierarchy of value, and passing judgment according to said hierarchy. If you choose sushi, that is because you've deemed it best f... See more