The youth, the upward dreams, the emphasis on life style over other status markers, the disdain for industrial hierarchy, the social benefits of good deeds and warm thoughts—only proper nouns distinguish this description from a portrait of the startup culture in the Bay Area today. It is startling to realize that urban tech life is the closest heir to the spirit of the sixties, and its creative efflorescence, that the country has so far produced.
Nathan Heller: How San Francisco’s Entrepreneurial Culture Is Changing the Country : The New Yorker. I wonder if it’s even possible to be more wrong than this. Heller seems to have been misled by geography and the presence of t-shirts and jeans into thinking that two movements are closely related that in fact could scarcely be more diametrically opposed. And the very idea that the SF tech world is indifferent to status markers….
(Actually, as Alexis Madrigal has gently reminded me on Twitter, I don’t know enough about this world to have an opinion. I’ll leave the post up as a marker of my own silliness, though.)