Every once in a while one of these shaky things passes through San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and the surrounding areas, and in about ten seconds I find myself thinking about “the big one” and all the things I should have done before an untimely death buried beneath rubble of an over-priced building.

But this one, like all the others I’ve felt in the past ten years of living here, came and went, and despite some shaking of potted plants and the cats looking at us like we were magicians, all is back to normal. And if the power hasn’t gone out along with the Internet connection, life moves on.

I guess it was a 5.6, centered in the East Bay a bit north of San Jose. There are some longish threads to check out at SF Gate and The Daily Kos.

Earlier today, there was some Techmeme yammering about the Web 2.0 bubble (which I feel definitely exists). After some thought about how greedy and dumb always follows smart and innovative, in the larger scheme of things - I’m resigned that this is just how things “roll” in the Bay Area. Boom, bubble, bust, boom, bubble, bust. It’s fast, efficient, and alternately stupid and cruel at the same time.

Risk tolerance with the dangling dream of a big payoff just might be cultural out here. After all, it takes a certain sort of lunacy to even consider a single-story house with interest-only loan, sitting on the edge of a major earthquake fault line some sort appreciating asset - hence a huge housing bubble that’s finally collapsing. This bubble-prone behavior is looked on from most parts of the country as insanity by “those crazy Californians.” When the Big One hits - the rest of the nation will surely have measured sympathy (not unlike that displayed after Katrina) while wondering, now why was all that stuff built on the edge of that huge crack in the earth?

Perhaps the threat of impending doom inspires a sort of “carpe-diem” in many of us Bay Area-ns. Knowing that you could easily lose everything in “the big one” - you may as well do it on your own terms, doing what you really want to do.

Categories: General, Technology :: Tags: :: Trackback URL
Front Page
Previous Post: Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, Apple
Next Post: The Prisoner: Many Happy Returns
Related Posts: Earthquake in Hawaii :: TechCrunch Pricks The Wrong Bubble :: Sorry To Be A Downer :: Want To Get Attention? Deny Geeks Their Internets ::