Abstraction

One of the things I love most about living in Silicon Valley is how it celebrates geeks. Everything that is geeky, everything that made high school a miserable experience, is the norm here. It’s embraced. If it happens makes you very rich, it’s even sexy. People that aren’t geeky, or are at least associated with some geeky endeavor, are assumed to be cognitively impaired in some fundamental way. Not in a “you are stupid” way, but in a “you don’t really get it” kind of way.

It’s necessary at this point to admit that every non-geek I know (including my wife) would rush to emphasize that they in no way wish to “get it,” nor do they feel their life is in any way poorer for not “getting it,” and where the hell does a geek get off denigrating another person anyway, for God’s sake, not to mention the many things that geeks “don’t get,” including, all too frequently, personal hygiene and a modicum of conversational ability.

But I digress.

My point, such as it is, is that I just learned about the Tech Shop in Menlo Park. From the Tech Shop home page:

TechShop is a fully-equipped open-access workshop and creative environment that lets you drop in any time and work on your own projects at your own pace. It is like a health club with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment…or a Kinko’s for geeks.

I think that such a great place could only exist in Silicon Valley. Anyway, kudos to Guy Kawasaki for pointing it out. Very, very cool.