About this episode

This episode explores the concept of 'taste' and its relevance in contemporary tech culture.

This is a preview | For full audio and show notes plus extras, subscribe via https://patreon.com/newmodels or https://newmodels.substack.com _ When Enlightenment-era scholars taxonomized humankind, they chose homo sapiens, in part because of what they observed as a uniquely human aptitude for “taste.” [“Taste” comes from the Latin taxare (to handle, to assess) – an intensive form of tangere (to touch). It is a term that via vulgar Latin blended with gustare (to taste, to try) to express the act of appraising something by physically handling or even consuming it. In proper Latin, there is the related term sapere, which carries a double meaning of “to taste” and “to be wise.” To taste, in the sense of sapere, is to possess wisdom through tangible experience.] It’s remarkable that in recent years, and intensely in recent months, the idea of “taste”—“having taste,” “deploying taste,” “taste agents,” “integrating a taste layer,” “taste as a core skill,” “taste as moat”—has become an ultra-present concern in tech circles. Isn’t having taste (wherever one falls along the taste spectrum) an inherent quality of being human? To be sure, there’s already a lot of writing on this phenomenon…

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