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A long advertisement for a pile of books. Not to mention the article states the obvious - different cultures are.. you know.. different. Am I missing something
by codemac 13y ago
A long advertisement for a pile of books. Not to mention the article states the obvious - different cultures are.. you know.. different.
Am I missing something? Was there anything more to this?
- supersystem 13y agoAsk Noam Chomsky ;) This is largely about the difference between the connotation and denotation of words. http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/connotations.htm http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/connotations.htm
- nl 13y agoI think you cynicism is unnecessary. Knowing different cultures are.. you know.. different is pretty pointless without being able to point to specific examples of just how alien they can be to one another. I - for one - didn't know that quality in Korea meant "newness".
- yongjik 13y ago> I - for one - didn't know that quality in Korea meant "newness". Yeah, me neither, and I'm Korean. * Well, it can be a sound advice to say "when you want to sell a product in Korea, emphasize it's new." But that's just plain old marketing strategy and sounds boring. (When selling books to English users, play on cultural relativism?)
- jrs99 13y agoI also didn't know everyone in japan would think that perfection = quality. That really is a revelation to me. And if you ask everyone in Korea, they'll tell you new = quality. They are kind of related culturally, yet they are radically different. I actually asked a Korean man the same question maybe 20 years ago, and he told me that he thought quality product meant "well crafted." Maybe because he was americanized in some way by watching American movies, etc.?
- bitwize 13y agoI also didn't know everyone in japan would think that perfection = quality. Me neither. Japanese aesthetics has a distinct place for rough, imperfect items which are referred to with terms like shibui and wabi-sabi. Such items have flaws, often deliberately introduced, which give them "character" so may in some circumstances be preferred over the "perfect" item.
- thaumasiotes 13y agoConsider that I always buy laptops "refurbished". Dell's definition of a refurbished laptop includes "someone else ordered this, and we built it, but then they canceled the order and we never shipped it". The discount you get for buying one of these, relative to a "new" (different how?) one, is substantial. > I actually asked a Korean man the same question maybe 20 years ago, and he told me that he thought quality product meant "well crafted." Maybe because he was americanized in some way by watching American movies, etc.? Occam's razor would suggest that he said that because that's what "quality" means, and the article was written by a blowhard.
- nl 13y agoAre you saying that "quality" has no "taste" of newness in it? "Newness" being an especially desirable trait in Korea is a separate trait (and interesting enough in itself).
- jrs99 13y agoWell, it's not #1 and getting consistently upvoted more than anything else on hacker news at the moment for no reason at all. So it's probably a revelation to most people and very relevant to all programmers. If you go to: http://www.sachitgupta.me/ http://www.sachitgupta.me/ you'll find someone in marketing and generates leads. that's probably coincidental since most people on hacker news are in marketing. I don't think you should be curious why this is #1.
- MattBearman 13y agoIsn't every post on a start up's blog a way to get more customers?