Hoorn, Terschelling, a walking island and an ugly watch

What was a white beach in my youth – 45 years ago – now seems to become an illustration of a walking island.

I once lost one of the first digital watches here—a Trafalgar with red numerals that lit up only when you pressed a button. My father had gotten it from a colleague, who had gotten it as a business gift but thought the thing was too ugly—something like the one below. Very ugly indeed.

News not worthy

How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve?

Neil Postman

Good taste

Good taste, to me, is liking what you see and knowing why you like it.

Seth Godin writes in The Practice:

… the ability to know what your audience or clients are going to want before they do.
… watch what the market does and learn from that.

To me, that is too much of a market-oriented view of taste. The second statement also disagrees somewhat with the first.

I don’t think you learn about good taste by observing the market. You only learn what is out there and what the people with the most enormous mouths say about what they like.

Good taste is about appreciation for the specific. The market is about appreciation for the average.

Failure narrative

From Seth Godin’s The Practice, this creator’s failure narrative:

  • There is more supply than demand; therefore, most of the feedback is rejection. From the market, from the gatekeepers.
  • The work is created with generally available tools. The group that believes they can do the same job or better is large.
  • The fanbase is transient, and the churn is significant.
  • Negative criticism spreads easier than positive feedback.
  • We work in novelty. There is always more novelty for our customers to turn to.
  • We and our customers chase creative magic. By that standard, almost all of our efforts fail.

Then, successful creators have in their favor the benefit of the doubt and tribal cognitive dissonance.