Yeah, if only those rednecks in places like Huntsville, Alabama (most engineers and PhD per capita) or Houston would stop focusing on banalities like jet propulsion[1] and subsea robots[2] and spend more time "checking in" to bars on their cell phones, then they could perhaps catch up with the futurists living on the coasts.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Space_Flight_Center

[2] http://subseacompanies.com/