Anatomy

Taste is the ability to identify quality. To understand quality we need to look critically at: materials that are fit for purpose, ergonomy that considers audience needs, effective use of affordances, usability, accessibility, harmonic color choices, aesthetic choices that elicit emotion, intentional visual hierarchy — amongst others. Taste is in the observer, quality is in the object. The concept of taste becomes more productive when framed objectively around quality, and in ways that are measurable or at least comparable.

The quality of conversation is a two way street. When we listen intently, we invite the speaker to invest more of themselves into the dialogue. We welcome them to speak more honestly, openly, and dare them to go places they might hesitate to move toward otherwise.  In a world full of distractions, hardly anyone is listening, meaning there’s less care in what’s being said.  If you want to walk away with something, let them know you can hear & understand them.

My dream is for people to drop out from these major websites, but stay online. Keep the urge for connection and sharing that makes social media so appealing, but satisfy the urge in individual, unique, wonderful ways. I want people to maintain personal sites in the same way they wrote zines. I want people to share homemade music through homemade social networks, and to create both just for the pure love of it. I want our personalities to come through not just in the words or links we share, but in the URLS we use and the code we write. I dream of regional communities forming online, based around organically grown web rings, and for idiosyncrasies to form in the aesthetics of our sites based on the communities we learned to code from. Basically, to bring back all the things that made the early internet so exciting and open and welcoming. It's a little bit harder, but that's part of the charm. It means the connections you make are intentional, and everything you create and share online will always be yours, because you made everything yourself.

I don't want to know more, I want to integrate more. It's not about accumulation, it's about connection.