Hey y’all,
I’m on a work trip this week in Dublin. It’s chaotic and my social battery is on empty, but I’ve still tried to find time to write in airport lounges and between meetings. I can’t say it’s been focused and productive, but writing is writing and that’s worth celebrating.
As I’ve ping-ponged around between workshops and team dinners and planning meetings, I’ve been in a surround sound of tech nerds talking about how we build software, and the importance of taste.
AKA, we’ve all read the same LinkedIn posts and begrudgingly accept that there may be some degree of accuracy to a few of them.
It used to be that learning to code was the big differentiator in the sector, but AI has fundamentally changed that mental model. There’s this misconception that, with AI, anybody can code now. It’s no longer the ability to code software that matters. It’s knowing what to build. And why. And for whom.
Those whos, whats, whys, whens, and wheres are typically folded together under the umbrella of taste. Having the right answers to those questions is what typically separates slop from value, at least in how the software industry thinks about it.
While I agree with my partner that too much of our culture and politics is built on emulating the tech industry, when it comes to reconnecting with creativity and dealing with pervasive distraction, I think there’s a decent lesson to be learned in the pursuit of taste.
What is taste? How do we develop taste? And why does it matter when we think about the cure for constant distraction?
You can go in-depth on these questions in my blog post, The Case for Having Taste, and I would encourage doing so. But as for what taste is and how the parallels of taste in the tech sector can act as a helpful framing for how you reclaim your creativity, consider this: taste is inherently opposed to mindless scrolling because taste cannot be mindless.
Taste is critical and analytical. It considers aesthetics alongside craft and impact. Having a sense of taste requires actively considering how a piece of art is situated within the cultural zeitgeist– the norms it challenges and the ones it reinforces.
Taste also distinguishes craft from “content.” Is something purely intended for quick scrolling and uncritical consumption? Or, is it a reflection of one’s effort, curiosity, and interest?
I think that’s where taste becomes most interesting to me. It’s not necessarily a gauge for quality. To have taste does not dictate that you must only consume the most prestigious films in the canon, read classic literature, or listen to avante garde experimental neo Gregorian cyber pop orchestral music recorded by rescue chimps in Asia.
Instead, taste is the willingness to look at something, question how or why it was made, and be curious about the impact of what has been produced.
I want to believe that we live in a world where people can do new and interesting things– where culture extends beyond the remit of thirty second TikTok trends that live for a month, make their way to Reels, and then become obsolete. Art and culture are reflections of our humanity, and surely that’s something worth a little curiosity and a critical eye, don’t you think?
As I’ve climbed into bed this week and reached for my phone, I’ve found myself questioning if what I’m consuming prior to bed actually has any degree of importance-- if it actually represents an interaction with the cultural zeitgeist in an interesting way.
Often… it doesn’t.
It doesn’t make scrolling go away or entirely unappealing, but that consideration does bring me a greater sense of awareness that makes it harder to lose track of time entirely.
So, if you’re like me and yearning for a time when mental stimulation was the norm (wait, did I peak in college?), challenge yourself to take a step back and consider the nuance of what you consume. When was the last time you challenged yourself to unpack metaphors, digest cultural critique, or draw parallels between texts while consuming some form of media? Pick a short story or a film and analyze it the way you would if you were in English 101. Try it on for size– see how it feels– and let me know what that experience is like.
Xoxox,
Blake