TEPaul,
Love the philosophical topic, along with Player vs. Architect elsewhere here.
To specifically answer your question, I don't know what taste is, but there always seem to be a few dictating it to the massses, who generally aren't buying! So, who has better taste - the few who buy symphonic recordings, or the millions who bought Elvis and the Beatles, among others?
America's taste is seemingly always for something new. Not all of it works. In other cases, like Art Deco, its a fad, its trashed a decade later, and its rehashed about 3 decades later.
Many of our inspirations - including the new post modern design you seemingly favor - come from retro and nostalgic ideas - look at the 2005 Mustang, or Fords attempt to udate the original Thunderturd. In golf design, the predominant trends starting in the 80's was a new style, focused on using cost efficient earthmoving to create a wow factor. Then, there were the retro phases of psuedo Scottish and psuedo Golden Age, each slightly adapted to our times.
I don't know what will happen next, but I doubt, seriously, that it will be a long term trend, whatever it is. I don't think that the new minimalism will be declared the "right answer" for all time, because of the american desire for changing styles.
I believe that both the 20's and 90's focused on current ideas of taste to a higher degree than other eras, simply because the economy allowed us the chance to build slightly above functional levels in all design fields. In most other eras, that doesn't happen.
Contrary to you (I think) I think that more classics will be recognized from this era than any other than the golden age. And, part of the reasons they will become "classics" is that accelerated golf technology will force major events to these new courses, so they can start building their own tradition points, as it were.
Its a complex topic......I'll post again if I figure out what my point is.....
