It almost sounds as though Brian Eno has been reading Ted Gioia. Here’s Eno on “the death of uncool”:
We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.
I think this is good news.
Read more from Brian Eno at Prospect.
