I agree with the sentiment in this that contemporary media is distracting and oversaturated. But when he says: >The simple test of time does yield false negat

I agree with the sentiment in this that contemporary media is distracting and oversaturated. But when he says: >The simple test of time does yield false negatives. I wonder what makes him so sure it doesn't yield false positives. My own view on aesthetics is that they're highly personal - something "timeless" might not appeal to you at all. Timeless works are the ones which happen, overall, to appeal to the most people - it doesn't mean they necessarily are higher "quality." It also has to do with how accessible they are, how ubiquitous (/ marketed), etc. (Sidenote, but his arguments against startup aesthetics could also apply to modernism and many other movements. It's about distilling something to it's essence, removing superfluous details in favor of clarity. For all the faults "flat" design has, I think it is a noble cause even if it takes some missteps.) There is a lot of contemporary work (programming, music, art, etc) that I find compelling, and personally I want to embrace it. Understanding the contemporary helps you understand the current moment of time, and where things are going. It lets you see larger trends and where you might want to fit in. I'm not very afraid of embracing something that turns out to be a false start - at least, at the moment, I was doing what I thought was best. Maybe this is a fallacy of youth. I'm all for embracing the classics, the tried and true. But I think applying lessons learned from them to the unproven ideas is where things get interesting.