The Taste Report™: Ben Dietz

I define good taste as knowing what other people want just before they do. So if you're the only person who wants peanut butter covered licorice, you're entitled to eat peanut butter covered licorice, but you don't have good taste because everyone else thinks that's weird.

And people, whether they're jazz musicians or fabric designers are seen as ha... See more

Our tastes are learned in the context of immense social influences, whether from our family, our friends, or the cheery font on a bottle of soda. Yet it’s still possible, as Duncker showed, to carve out new tastes for ourselves. We can put the impressionable nature of our likes to good use. If we expose ourselves enough times to enough different fo

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I think of taste like a radar. As you move through the world, your radar scans and picks up on what aligns.

Code is cheap. Money now chases utility wrapped in taste, function sculpted with beautiful form, and technology framed in artistry.

But what exactly is taste? The dictionary says it’s the ability to discern what is of good quality or of a high aesthetic standard . But who sets that standard? Taste may be subjective, but within a given culture or co... See more