The “Creative Class” (revisited)
I re-read the article I talked about in the entry below that talks about the book, ““, and I found a couple quotes that I just had to put down here. These really stood out to me and hit home. I definitely need to read “” and if you can relate, you should too…
This is basically just for me, but I’m sure other people might appreciate them.
- “They [Austin, TX] created a lifestyle mentality, where Pittsburgh and Detroit were still trapped in that Protestant-ethic/bohemian-ethic split, where people were saying, “You can’t have fun!” or “What do you mean play in a rock band? Cut your hair and go to work, son. That’s what’s important.” Well, Austin was saying, “No, no, no, you’re a creative. You want to play in a rock band at night and do semiconductor work in the day? C’mon! And if you want to come in at 10 the next morning and you’re a little hung over or you’re smoking dope, that’s cool.”
- ” Being a child of the ’60s, I kept thinking about the Mamas and the Papas, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and the early San Francisco music scene. Then I read this book called “Fire in the Valley,” written 20 years ago about the early Silicon Valley, and you look at the pictures and it’s just mind-blowing! You have photos of the traditional engineers wearing bowties next to these hippies with long hair. I mean, think about Jobs and Wozniak with hair down to their butts going in and asking Don Valentine for money. I interviewed Don Valentine, he said, “I didn’t care what Steve Jobs looked like, I didn’t care that he didn’t have any shoes.” In other areas these people would have been run out the door.
The ’60s cracked the bohemian/bourgeois split, and California is the place this stuff starts to brew. It became very early on a kind of capitalism that recognizes that you don’t have to have all this bullshit organizational, bureaucratic nonsense to be successful. San Francisco was a place where weird people could find a place. In these corporate organizational-based communities where you have the country-club type of atmosphere, there was no place for a different or eccentric person there. ”
- “We have to take responsibility for the society we’re driving. If not, the social and political consequences are dire. The creative class has to look beyond itself and offer members of society a vision in which all can participate and benefit from. That’s the challenge of our age.”
This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2003 at 4:55 pm and is filed under creative. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
(posts)