Why We Like Things
from Aarva Hosted by Asterisk
If a machine can make anything, where do your personal tastes actually come from? In this piece from 11 August 2026, Asterisk magazine looks at the tech industry's sudden obsession with a very old concept. As artificial intelligence gets better at generating code and copy, executives are claiming that human taste is the ultimate competitive moat. But the essay pauses to ask what taste actually is, and whether it can really be reduced to a business advantage. Moving from the Industrial Revolution to the Bauhaus design school, it treats aesthetic judgment as something far more interesting than a talent for picking the right font. It asks how personal preferences connect people to one another. An examination of how people develop their tastes, treating aesthetic judgment as a learned social habit rather than an innate talent. Drawing on the history of the Bauhaus movement, theories of class and desire, and Hannah Arendt's political philosophy, it traces how individuals form and share their preferences. Taste emerges not as a private competitive asset, but as a way to communicate and participate in a shared world. Read at source: Asterisk For more features and details, visit aarva.app
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