You want builders, go blue collar. Machinists, masons, mechanics and teachers. They know how to get * done. Not Stanford CS grads ensconced in their golden FAANG coffins.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7n1ZFJFtP4
[2] http://www.bistrooffbroad.com/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Dpl7xGhzhA / https://www.latinflavorssteakhouse.com/
[4] http://hometownrhythms.com/
This is in a place where every building used to look like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9922385,-83.7205603,3a,90y,2...
It started from a dying post-WW2 textile town and now it's showing up in movies and TV shows as an idyllic small town. It's not even that kind of idyllic small town. The local paper's editor wrote articles in favor of marriage equality, trans rights, and racial equality and still hasn't been run out of town.
To which I would say a lot. Spaceships, CERN, LIGO, giant skyscrapers, and a lot more.
Even a mundane bridge near a small town saves thousands of people a day of making a detour. This might not sound 'impressive', but imagine a bridge that gets used by just a thousand people a day and that replaces a detour that takes 15 minutes longer. That's a 1000 people * 0.25 hours * 2 times a day = 500 human hours saved per day, or over 180.000 hours saved per year. With a lifespan of 50 years equals that to close to 10 million(!) hours or 4500 'working years' saved. This is an example of just a small bridge near a small town, just imagine the benefit of larger bridges (and other infrastructure projects) near the big cities.
The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t.
That’s going to break people’s hearts.
I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.
These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not downplaying that. But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light – that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.
[…]
Lincoln did not have a Web site at the log cabin where his parents home-schooled him, and he turned out pretty interesting. Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology.What matters most in the world is how we treat each other. Technology doesn’t do much there... its effect is mostly neutral.
I'll save my belief in the Bay Area being a real change agent for when I see real change happening in their systems.
I think the author of the article is on to something. I'm not sure precisely that the author has all points right, but directionally and at least fuzzily, it feels right.
> The real question is whether we will be able to rebuild a building culture. I believe it is possible; Silicon Valley has shown that building sub-cultures can persist even in the face of general malaise. I am afraid this is a long term project. It may involve wrenching cultural authority out of the hands of existing arbiters and pulling it towards places like Silicon Valley, where men and women have not forgotten how to get things done. This may require building up the sort of cultural, media, and political infrastructure that exists along the Acela Corridor, just divorced from the patronage networks that currently keep things anchored in Washington and New York. Tech titans who care about these things should begin thinking seriously about what it would take to begin political and social experiments in the places closest to them: San Fransisco and its metro, other towns and cities in the state, perhaps California itself.