You know that the right has done an incredible job of framing issues when you look at what they've done with the perception of San Francisco. If the city was located in a red state, they would be singing its praises to no end. Because San Francisco and the Bay Area in general, my friends, sparked the greatest economic engine the world has seen since the industrial revolution.
And San Francisco did it without tearing up the Earth or fouling the air. They didn't mine for gold or drill for oil. They created wealth from human ingenuity.
Of course I'm talking about the computer technology revolution that is still rolling along, even picking up speed. Much of the personal computer revolution was spawned by hippies who had eschewed LSD to see if computers could liberate the mind and spirit. And while the outcome remains to be seen, there are now tools that are in the hands of the general public that never were there before. Publishing, radio, TV -- you name it. It's all in our hands now. And we owe that to the original hippie geeks.
We know that this creative a medium could never have been optimized by a conservative culture that always looks back, never forward. The cons today on their Blackberries and iPhones take it for granted, like they do most everything that progressive thinkers created. But it was the Bay Area that made technology for everyone rather than leave it in the dangerous hands of only the federal government and corporations. They even took the Internet from the feds, like they did LSD, and made it their own.
San Francisco is really the capital of the world of the 21st century. And now it's working on the next necessary phase to help human beings live with the planet with green innovation and investing. It will be interesting to see what it does next, but be assured that the San Francisco tech hippie ethos that populates Apple, Google, Pixar, to name but a few, will inspire this next generation of green companies as well.