Californication

Finally, someone else, (other than me) is talking about how parts of the US -- maybe California -- could eventually consider secession. I've seen this trend coming for a long time, even BEFORE Enron so royally screwed them. If you look at Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Santa Barbara and San Diego, you'll see there's enough technology, entertainment and science brain power in these communities alone to make one very $unny $unshine $tate, I mean Country. They also do something better than anyone else -- something essential to innovation -- they actually cultivate true diversity.

Check this out from Fast Company. In a piece by Anni Layne Rodgers about futurist Juan Enriquez, How Genomics Changes Everything, she outlines his thoughts how intellectual capital really will create wealth in new regions and determine power in this world.

... Though a similar secession is unlikely within the United States [ed., he'd discussed Slovenia in the prior paragraph], Enriquez warns that 50% of the country's wealth is generated by about 2% of its territory. Those pockets of innovation create the most patents, scientific discoveries, and economic value. They also differ greatly from most other regions in the country -- in ideals, priorities, and hopes for the future.

"There are four genomic regions in the United States: the republic of Torrey Pines, in San Diego; the kingdom of Cambridge, in Boston; the farm of Rockville, in Maryland; and the let's-try-it-again mecca of Silicon Valley," Enriquez says. "Those four regions are the largest sources of new patents in the United States. And then there are places here that still put warning labels on high-school textbooks saying that evolution is merely a theory. There are whole ethnic groups that are not science literate.

So much for e pluribus unum. If you take Weinberger's prescient thoughts on the subject of linked communities, this gives one a whole new way to look at the "geography" of a new world order. Are we transcending space AND geography with new communities of thought?