TechCrunch, in a stirring Op-Ed, calls for US out of Silicon Valley, as it is the center of the universe and deserves special status. A Special Regulatory Zone will be established in gritty, crime-ridden Oakland. It will be the first Panopticon drone state, completely monitoring its populace 24/7, free from onerous governmental regulations, ruled by benevolent tech overlords. How the new boss will be different from the old boss is a bit unclear. However, we are taking Silicon Valley here, so surely their special wonderfulness will create a entrepreneur’s paradise, free from intrusion by the damned gummint. Plus, Silicon Valley will no longer have to lie about how they don’t monitor the public and the possibilities of profiting by selling the data to NSA are awesome indeed.
I’m confident that the imposition of a Special Regulatory Zone organized by Silicon Valley’s finest tech minds would be welcomed by most of Oakland, much as a grateful Iraqi population greeted their American liberators a decade ago.
We may however need to tweak the demographics of the Special Regulatory Zone a little for testing purposes. To make space, Luddites, hipsters, and other technological throwbacks could be humanely resettled to camps in the Central Valley, where I’m given to understand that there’s a thriving informal economy of agriculture jobs that can support them.
However, I’m afeared it will never work. Oakland gangs will view the naive, cloistered techies as easy pickings and hordes of left-wing Berkeley politicos will hack through the Panopticon and wreck their libertarian wet dream. very sad.