creation vs curation vs taste

The conversation around taste tends to focus on what it takes to develop it, but not what it takes to use it and unlock its potential, which is confidence .

Having and developing taste is one thing, but remaining connected to our taste is another. In order to take advantage of our taste, we have to be able to access its insights and guidance, which... See more

We survive by naming shapes.

Lion, lightning, invoice. Commit to memory, move on.

That shorthand spares calories, keeps skin intact, and lets us cross streets without philosophizing about trucks.

The tradeoff: the moment a thing fits a label, its edges fade.

Nuance gets deleted, anomalies slip through the net, the field of possibility shrinks.

Useful... See more

That’s why taste is a responsibility. It’s not just about what you like. It’s about what you allow in.

Taste is how you protect your mental environment.

Integrating AI into our workflows has created a "meta-optimization problem." When everyone suddenly gets 10x more powerful, the hard part isn't doing things—deciding what's worth doing in the first place.

There will always be creators. But the ones who stand out in this era are also curators. People who filter their worldview so cleanly that you want to see through their eyes. People who make you feel sharper just by paying attention to what they pay attention to.

The third stage of culture in the zettabyte age, after the hipster and the nerd, is the zombie. If the hipster represents cultural taste as sorting algorithm, and the nerd represents cultural taste determined by sorting algorithm, the zombie is the point at which we stop consuming culture-commodities altogether and start directly consuming the... See more

Listening to yourself is the route to good taste, but so is listening to other people. We catch the fire of other people’s enthusiasm, which is rooted in their knowledge. That is how we discover newer, better things, be they novels, films, symphonies, cuisines, clothes.

In the glut of generated content, no one really speaks. No one risks themselves on the page.