Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

I think this article is being really dramatic about how “bad” and “oppressive” this is supposed to be.

Is the Irish Pub a bad thing? You can find an Irish Pub anywhere. It’s a deliberate export [1]. But that’s not oppressive or exclusionary. The Irish Pub is just good design that has universal appeal.

I wish the article would just admit that this is an appealing, perhaps timeless style that appeals business owners across the globe. Its roots in minimalism equates to low setup costs. The aesthetics are pleasing to spend time in. What’s to complain about?

Then there’s the paragraph addressing the homogenous nature of the clientele. I have to push back on that one: I doubt that coffee shops in China or Japan with this aesthetic are mostly patronized by white people.

Also, you know, affluent people are allowed to have their own tastes and culture. That fact alone is not oppressive to anyone else by default. Affluent people who like expensive coffee, minimalism, MacBook Pros, and house plants are just existing, minding their own business patronizing a class of businesses they enjoy. In this case it’s not like they’re hunting endangered animals, they’re just drinking overpriced coffee.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/04/12/523653040/epis...

The issue is that wealthy people in your comment aren’t choosing the aesthetic reflective of their geography and heritage. They’re choosing an aesthetic prescribed and circumscribed by what they see on social media.

For example, I live in a tropical country with hot summers and monsoons. Historically, dwellings here have had tall ceilings, narrow windows, little glass. Still, of late, builders have embraced larger windows with tinted glass, lower ceilings, commode style toilets instead of Orissa pan toilets, and other such stylistic choices.

I’m sure no one told them to adopt this style. They simply converged on this through some combination of their own exposure to Instagram and pricy designers showing them catalogs of what dwellings in other parts of the world look like.

This break from local rootedness to global interconnectedness is what the article is about.

I just think the article is too negative about the shift toward global interconnectedness. Like I said, there are trends that are appealing to everyone on the globe.

In your example, the availability of air conditioning and improvements in building materials (insulation) and glass technology (…insulation) are too important to omit. Also, these building technologies mean that you don’t have to have a have a specific aesthetic to achieve comfort and efficiency goals. You can build a concrete and glass building with the same airflow and insulating properties as traditional construction. One example I heard about recently is the new jewelers complex in India. It’s a skyscraper complex that uses a wind funneling system to send airflow down the main promenade and reduce the need for air conditioning. Of course, the design is nothing like traditional Indian architecture, but it accomplishes its goals effectively.

The toilet example is another one where the obvious comfort advantage of the Western toilet makes it universally appealing. As much as nature’s flow prefers squatting, there are obvious ease of use and accessibility advantages to sitting on a chair.

I think of global interconnectedness being more like everyone being able to make more discoveries. If Danish people eat more Chinese food because they think it tastes better than their local cuisine, it’s not some kind of perverse negative of global interconnectedness that they abandoned their roots. They just got exposed to a new idea that they liked and decided it was the way to go. Being interconnected with the entire globe means that more ideas can be shared.

> Danish people eat more Chinese

In this and the jewellers complex example, you may be elevating function in your mind over form.

The original article is about form.

To tie us back to the coffee shop example, your comment would be akin to saying that since Italian coffee machines make better coffee, it’s fine if more coffee shops use espresso machines.

That’s not the point being made - the espresso machine isn’t the issue - ensconcing people in a cocoon of familiarity even in new, unfamiliar places is.

Mark Twain said, travelling is fatal to prejudice but that’s only if we are truly travelling - if we travel without making ourselves uncomfortable, have we really gone anywhere?

We could make the argument that forcing someone to travel to obtain a unique experience isn’t better than depriving the traveler of their wish to experience something unfamiliar.

There has been a (tiring) trend in journalism in recent years where all ideas must be linked somehow to climate change, racism, capitalism, or some other politically charged trigger button. Apparently one can’t simply write about a style of cafe decor because that wouldn’t qualify as Serious Journalism.

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