I am sure Robert Scoble is a very nice guy. He’s smart, affable, and very passionate about technology. Plus he was once a Blankbaby reader, he stopped reading a while ago, but something tells me he’ll see this post.
The problem with Robert is one that many of the A list tech bloggers have: the geographical echo chamber. Sure, most of the A Listers know each other in real life, and of course they are going to link to one another. However, there is this propensity for West Coasters in, or near, the Silicon Valley to think that all tech happens there (the same geographical echo chamber can be seen in many residents of Manhattan. Many simply refuse to leave Manhattan because they see no reason. If it matters, it happens in Manhattan, right?).
This idea crystallized when I read this passage on Scoble’s blog, which oddly enough is about Web 2.0 stuff gaining traction outside of the Valley:
The thing is I’m getting reports from around the world that people are talking about Facebook in weird places like Moscow and Paris and Cape Town.
Now, I’m not sure what makes these places ‘weird,’ but it isn’t like they are small little backwaters. According to Wikipedia Moscow is the world’s 20th largest city by population, followed by Paris which takes slot number 21 (Philadelphia clocks in at 45th, which makes it SUPER weird, while San Fran-Oakland takes the 87th spot beating out Cape Town which is 98th).
My point is that urban centers are always places where art, commerce, and technology have historically intermingled. It is the height of arrogance to think that people outside of Silicon Valley aren’t doing cool stuff (or using Facebook for goodness sake!). Lots of cool stuff is even happening right here in good old Philadelphia (Ban Franklin, by the way, certainly didn’t think Paris was weird. He was a noted Francophone and America’s ambassador to France for a spell).
4 responses to “Scoble unwittingly sums up what is wrong with the A list bloggers”
I’ve made this same point in the past – and I used Scoble as my example too! Great minds think alike 😉
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to feed the pigs before I check my facebook page 🙂
I don’t really have pigs…I do have a horse though.
I see the same thing – and to be honest, a lot of great tech IS coming out of SV right now. But Twitter got it’s funding here. And there’s always new tech/services, etc happening on the East Coast. Maybe it’s the dearth of perceived “A” list bloggers here (are you going it alone, Scott?). But there’s a gentle sense of entitled arrogance.
Doesn’t Gruber live in Philly, Scott?
Living in Alabama as I do, it’s very fun to watch both coasts think that they know what this country’s talking about. But we’re all myopic—in my world, most folks care about NASA, and most Americans simply don’t. After all, to them, NASA is Shuttle accidents, astronaut ice cream, lost rovers and probes, and Tang. LOTS AND LOTS OF TANG.
So we’re all blinded by our own circumstances in a way.
In many ways I feel like we define ourselves by our locations. New York, though interesting, will never be Philadelphia to me because I grew up here.
I think that we all have a tendency to believe that no other location could possibly be as fabulous as ours… however untrue that may be!