But it’s important to recognize that the goal of developing one’s own taste is not to ultimately land on what other people think is good. Your taste belongs to you
The problem you solve for customers is increasingly one they can’t even articulate for themselves . The ones that are easy to understand have already been built and funded over the last 20 years. Building something of true excellence will require a hungrier engagement with the world—and that will have to start with developing superior taste.
I don't care who the hell you are or where you are from or whether you have been published before. Do you have something interesting to say? That's all that matters.
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... See more
Scale is quite valuable, but the costs are usually hidden. Consolidation leads to monoculture, it reduces the stock of unique ferments.
Culture, taste, and invention are often bottom-up phenomena. They require the opposite of scale. They require distance, and working alone.