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I think it a bit different actually - while you’re correct that there’s always been an aesthetic churn, the author is arguing that rather than having lots of po

I think it a bit different actually - while you’re correct that there’s always been an aesthetic churn, the author is arguing that rather than having lots of pockets around the world churning with their own tastes, now social media (or 2016) created a single global taste. Whatever that may be at the time, I think it’s reasonable to lament the lack of lots of people experimenting with ideas more independently. Of course, that ship has sailed, and perhaps the pushback on airspace or whatever is hot now will drive addition search for orthogonal differentiation.

ehnto 4y ago
Although I agree, I think even then it is more homogenous in history than we are suggesting here. Take the automotive industry as an example. The major manufacturing centres have been in design lockstep for decades, and automotive design tends to influence architecture and product design through history as well.
noduerme 4y ago
In terms of pushback, you can definitely see an almost desperate public surge toward any "odd" or "quirky" restaurant / bar / hotel space that opens in a major market now. The twofold problem is that, like small eastern european nations after WWI, these can't survive and retain autonomy between great powers. They either need to be designed from the ground up as a franchise model geared for expansion, with all the marketing, paraphernalia and impersonal management strategy that implies, or else if they're locally popular they'll be quickly assimilated and watered down by the larger many-faced corporate hospitality industry. Vanishingly few local or regional restaurants, bars, coffeehouses, etc. flourish for any length of time before they're co-opted. To me, the biggest single change wrought by the rapid spread of trends globally is that the cycle of co-opting has gotten shorter. Circular references to culture have become bounded by smaller and smaller time frames, and present an increasingly impoverished and banal version of wink-and-nod. What was once stepping into the past became ironic, and what was ironic is now unacknowledged and treated with a straight face. As a result of superficializing everything about the past, original ideas have dried up for lack of historical knowledge to fuel them, as nostalgia-mining tapped out the entire 20th Century. Look no further than the food-truck to brick-and-mortar to Whole Foods pipeline, or the same that's happened in the music industry from YouTube to Top 40.

ehnto 4y ago

Although I agree, I think even then it is more homogenous in history than we are suggesting here. Take the automotive industry as an example. The major manufacturing centres have been in design lockstep for decades, and automotive design tends to influence architecture and product design through history as well.

noduerme 4y ago

In terms of pushback, you can definitely see an almost desperate public surge toward any "odd" or "quirky" restaurant / bar / hotel space that opens in a major market now. The twofold problem is that, like small eastern european nations after WWI, these can't survive and retain autonomy between great powers. They either need to be designed from the ground up as a franchise model geared for expansion, with all the marketing, paraphernalia and impersonal management strategy that implies, or else if they're locally popular they'll be quickly assimilated and watered down by the larger many-faced corporate hospitality industry. Vanishingly few local or regional restaurants, bars, coffeehouses, etc. flourish for any length of time before they're co-opted. To me, the biggest single change wrought by the rapid spread of trends globally is that the cycle of co-opting has gotten shorter. Circular references to culture have become bounded by smaller and smaller time frames, and present an increasingly impoverished and banal version of wink-and-nod. What was once stepping into the past became ironic, and what was ironic is now unacknowledged and treated with a straight face. As a result of superficializing everything about the past, original ideas have dried up for lack of historical knowledge to fuel them, as nostalgia-mining tapped out the entire 20th Century. Look no further than the food-truck to brick-and-mortar to Whole Foods pipeline, or the same that's happened in the music industry from YouTube to Top 40.