Taste is the personalizing of Culture
Standing at the Mk.gee show, in absolute awe of what I was experiencing. It was clear that I was going to break the rule I set for myself just a mere five days ago.
Haven't decided
Have you decided there's no luck of the draw?
Baby, take what you want (ah)
Come on, take what you want— Mk.gee
Someone I respect once told me, if you don’t take the opportunity you believe to be uniquely yours, maybe it wasn’t.
I’m going to attempt to actually define these very nebulous ideas. And give others a framework to apply them as well.
What is Taste?
Taste is the personalizing of culture.
Naturally when reading that you may ask, well, how does Reggie define “culture”? I’ll pull from my tweet on this exact subject.
Culture is the collection of ways we do things that we don’t have to do. And the effects that creates in each other.
We HAVE to wear clothes. It’s protective. We don’t have to embellish it, have views on tailoring, etc. That’s “a culture”.
What is “A CULTURE”?
A culture are people that participate in the construction and meaning making of those activities. There are defined lines that create an inner and outer to make a culture recognizable.
Taste is the personalizing of culture.
We engage in the massiveness of culture everyday. Whether that be small town culture, or the giants that form the global cultural hubs like New York, Paris, and Tokyo. And with the proliferation of the internet and social media technologies — our ability to engage and reference beyond our cultural geographies has opened an entirely new chamber for the cultivation of taste.
As we engage in our culture, the different artifacts have an effect on us. We might feel an indiscernible giddiness when seeing a My Melody stuff doll, and in that same day feel a nearly unjustifiable annoyance hearing what feels like 3 identical K-Pop songs in a row at Uniqlo.
The collection of effects we are drawn to and repulsed by give us a choice. It gives us many choices. One primary choice is commerce. We very often acquire in order to define. Relationships are active time periods of possession. That’s why it’s very common to say “my taste’s have changed” while disposing of things. It’s a formal breaking of the relationship.
Another choice we are presented with is hobby/craft. The physical relationship of doing to demonstrate a personal satisfaction, communal alignment, care for the subject at hand. And why that activity… what drew you to that moment that you now choose to repeat? How have you been shaped by it?
Like a friend that starts climbing for a sense of community, and then starts wearing a lot more Arctyrex.
Seemingly innocent decisions, become radical forces of personal alignment. Embodied in wardrobe, 3rd places, relationships, trips, and more.
Taste is the personalizing of culture.
Identity Confirmation
Earlier this week Edmond tweeted out a piece from Exactitudes, which the image above is taken from. I twitter yelled at him to take it down, that these tech fools didn’t deserve to understand that art series. But now I’m writing this and I sort of need to use it… so everyone should go follow Edmond as my payment to them.
Exactitudes is a living breathing project of identity confirmation, turned communal archetype. That in the act of self definition, we are forced to reckon with that classic question of “how different are you really?”
Everything everything everything is a question of identity confirmation or confrontation.
How does this relate to taste?
What progresses culture, are those that can take the lineage of ideas and produce something new. Newness is culture’s heart beat and promise. It is an invitation to take the mantel. A system level affordance to let young and radical tastes, not too beat down by other influences yet, potentially take hold in the economic weave.
I wrote previously in my piece Anticipation is Culture
The new American product HAS to promise something else.
This to me is the pulse of it all. It is also why fashion is sort of the peak of cultural production. I used to say “culture is whatever calendar you subscribe to”. The promise of Spring/Summer or the Milan/London/New York/Paris structure keeps the pulse clear and the manufacturing lines busy.
It’s an opportunity for confirmation or confrontation, on a digestible schedule. Some brands and individuals are known to produce consistent confirmation, others confrontation. “WHITE LIVES MATTER” shirt = scheduled confrontation. Jacquemus with Kendall Jenner is scheduled Wintourian confirmation.
Our taste is that which confirms our identity. We pull from the timeline of culture, to reinforce the effect we want to have on ourselves.
“…the effect we want to have on ourselves.” what does that mean?
Like we defined earlier. Taste is the personalizing of culture. And culture is the collection of ways we do things that we don’t have to do. And the effects that creates in each other.
Let’s use some transitive property right now.
Taste is a cultivation of personal effects. Because this artifact that I pulled from culture makes me feel X, and I want that feeling looped, I’m going to bring that into myself. Whether that’s listening to the same ambient track every morning or wearing Thom Browne to work everyday.
In my essay “The Body as Mixer” I refer to this sense of effect, utilizing DJ hardware as a device to understand it. If you’re having trouble with this idea of “effect on the self”, that essay might help you.
Taste is the personalizing of culture.
Personalizing is a function of memory, experience, and aspiration. It compounds over time. From the first ad we experience as a ball of pure subconscious baby material, to the first time we smoke weed in a friend’s dorm room. The tapestry of experience informs each incremental decision and attraction.
It’s the mythology of our life.
When I was little, my Dad asked me what kind of clothes I liked. Apparently (my parents told this story to me because I had no memory of it) I said “the one with the horse on it”. “POLO?” my Dad said. And they knew I was going to be an expensive kid from that moment on.
Why was I attracted to that brand at such a young age? I’ve spent a good deal of time investigating this, especially because in high school and college I had a semi-popping preppy style blog.
My parents, from the day I was born, reinforced I was supposed to make my life as big as possible. From all that I had consumed as young boy, the aesthetic quality of Ralph Lauren spoke to a life that was quite large, powerful, and full of Take Ivy bookishness that my parents equally demanded of their kids.
I rejected the other aesthetics of my peers/what was broadly available to me, and fully embraced the values and objects that represented those qualities I deeply wanted for my own life.
WE ALL DO THIS. DON’T REPRESS THOSE MEMORIES, EVEN IF YOU FIND THEM CRINGE TODAY. IT IS A WELLSPRING TO DRAW FROM.
Applied Taste: Extension vs Synthesis
Let’s talk about the application of taste.
We apply our tastes everyday. Whether it’s our morning routine and getting dressed in the morning, or if you’re blessed to have a job where creative expression is a part of it — then your taste is part of your economic reality.
I view applied taste in two dominant categories (and these can get broken up into infinity, but let’s not do that): extension and synthesis.
Extension you can think of as more vertical, and intentionally daring. The lineage of this genre is currently at X, and I’m going to attempt to take it to X+1.
Synthesis is rounder. I want to pull from my references a, q, and j — and we are going to produce [88].
Applied taste is not subjective.
Understanding taste is not a passive judgement on if you like something or not. There’s plenty of things I don’t like and can fully admit was executed with a strong sense of applied taste. Rather, it’s the ability to discern whether or not someone has achieved their intention of either extension or synthesis.
Judging applied extensions can be very difficult to do if something isn’t within the wheelhouse you tend to deal in. For example, while I definitely have country/folk albums I dig throughout the years… I can’t speak to the physics that form it. So I’d never speak with authority there.
Judging applied synthesis can be equally as tricky, but if the references are made clear enough (and you are familiar with the mediums at play) you should be able to come to an objective conclusion.
Steve Jobs - The care of representation
Taste is the personalizing of culture.
Everyone is aware of the Steve story — taking calligraphy at Reed College. This story gets further mythologized when Steve applies this taste to the original Macintosh. Demanding that it has multiple typefaces, for others to have their own sense of expression while using the text editor application.
This is such a clean cut story around the definition of taste and applied taste.
Taste is not some idea of good design and brand. That definition isn’t rooted in a single damn thing.
Taste is that personalizing moment, that got transferred spiritually. It’s Naoto Fukasawa’s idea of embodiment in design. It didn’t come from a vague notion of “being good”. NOOOOOOOOO it came from dropping in on that moment in life, being ready and being open, and applying that life.
Taste is an opportunity to represent what you care about.
Taste in Technology
So what has happened?
The ultimate sin of Steve, or at least the posthumous mythology of Steve. Is that somehow, someway, we came to believe that taste in technology was about smooth UI animations and lickable buttons.
The reality is that most of these design boys wouldn’t know real taste if I put it in their mouths.
And this happened because… well it comes back to identity confirmation. The myths that are told, reinforce the highest identity in our field. We mimetically recreate these stories in order to feel a kinship with that identity. And we fall into the hell of hauntology of said identity.
So what ISSSSSS taste in technology? Can there be taste in technology?
Taste is the personalizing of culture. Technology (the industry) is the development of new technology (the noun) and products to improve quality of life.
Before I answer the question directly, I think this is a good time to do a quick exercise. The primary claim of the current taste in tech dialogue, is that taste is the new differentiating quality to venture size / generally interesting software outcomes.
Yet the past couple years has been defined by software organizations that are deeply and fundamentally research driven.
Now, I’m not saying research organizations don’t exist outside the realm of taste. They might be applying synthesis from the cultures of Bell Labs and Xerox Parc. I can’t really say. But this reality doesn’t even come up in the dialogue that’s being held about taste in technology.
Yes, there can be taste in technology. But the problem is that the majority of practitioners are not consciously trying to extend nor synthesize towards improving quality of life.
Instead we are stuck in the darkest loop of identity confirmation derivatives, in order to extract and accumulate professional status for ourselves.
Taste in technology is not “good” design or “good” branding. Those are simply the by-products.
Taste in technology is utilizing the lineage of a practice(s), that you have personalized towards some line of progress.
This might be really hard for people to grok because the definition is a confrontation of previous identity alignments around taste in technology.
Because when most people think about taste in technology, they want to only look at the applied synthesis portion. They want to believe that pulling a reference from Donald Judd for the form AND Walter Van Beirendonck for the vibes AND the Ethereum whitepaper for the product architecture, somehow amalgamates into Taste with a capital T. And when done correctly, it has the possibility to.
But that misses the critical half of applied extension.
The best example I have of this is the MIT Media Lab. There’s a clear sense of aesthetic and value properties that arrises when that organization is brought up, regardless of if it’s still true. It’s rooted in the pursuit of applied extension, which yielded the creative technology and research ethos we know it by.
It’s very easy for the synthesizers and the extenders to not dig each other. But we need each other to reinforce the best of both worlds. That what the golden era of Apple unlocked. That’s what we all still fetishize.
A quick point regarding Gatekeeping
I’m not going to get into the moral woes on gatekeeping. In general I think Virgil Abloh’s openness really made people think that gatekeeping was some moral sin, and also tied it to racial power line divides. I’m not saying that those things don’t exist, but I want to focus my points on gatekeeping around the technology community and the economics of such.
In short, gatekeeping is necessary in a culture that refuses to attribute where they get their ideas.
I cannot begin to list the amount of very beloved “tasteful” builders that text me ~ how do I make this cool. And in the general spirit of collaboration I give them some answer, just for them to turn around and garner the attention without recognition.
Why does this happen?
It is very easy to reference dead / retired people. Because capital and attention will not flow to them in any way that harms you. It’s hard to reference your peers that are equally “live players”, because it openly admits that the sauce isn’t coming from you.
Gatekeeping helps keep markets rational. If you don’t have the resource of sauce, you must pay for the sauce. This happens at the high levels of our industry, because Brian Chesky has enough cash to collect ex-Apple all stars and talk about them openly on podcasts. There’s actually a whole silent game within a certain pocket of tech to collect the ex-Steve crew. And you can loop straight back to identity confirmation. If I can recruit these guys, I can confirm the Steve archetype in myself. The arbiter of tech taste, and now I wield his exact sword.
Breaking my rule about writing about taste in tech
I tend to write anything because it builds up so aggressively inside me that I have no other option. And while that characterization may come across as a form of psychological burden, it truly is one of the things I deeply enjoy doing for free in this world.
I don’t think I’ve ever written a “counter piece” to someone else’s work. I don’t view this as a counter piece because the format would have to change completely — by that I mean I would have to essentially go claim by claim (or lack there of) and deconstruct their work in order express mine. That didn’t feel interesting to me.
The one thing I thought was funny about Anu’s piece is that it claims “no one owns taste” but then sort of poo-poo’s the anticipated reaction of people that views the subject of taste as their “special territory”.
You can’t have both of these things. And it’s what tech people broadly get wrong about many other intersectional dialogues. Either no one owns taste, and therefore you and anyone else can write about it. OR you view it as a special territory yourself (defining lines are a critical feature of a culture), and so you look forward to the involvement of others that do as well.
And this is the problem. Tech’s relationship with speed running intellectual authority really allows someone to believe they can hold both of those feelings simultaneously. “No one owns it, and reacting to it is also bad.” Wait… what. That’s not how this works.
I encourage someone else to do it to this piece.
I don’t do edits really, so excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.
Thanks so much for giving me your attention. I hope it was worth it, if not… unsubscribing will not hurt my feelings, and will give you back time you literally cannot have back.
Much love.
Live in the light