They have to come here. One of the great promises of the Internet, after all, is liberation from the petty constraints of geography. But in practice, that's absurd -- if you want to be anyone in tech, you have to be in the Bay Area. Which means that, this one time, the Internet didn't actually live up to its promise to change something. But that's the only time that happened, or ever will happen. That and ending racism. And raising the living standard of the middle class. It turns out the internet has failed to do any of that.

But that's it. We should be confident that every other promise made about the Internet by tech-funded economists, tech-funded journalists, and tech-entrepreneurs, will come true. Why? Because: Technology. Disruption. New Economy. 2.0. [...]

Study the roots of our new tech economy, and you'll find that it differs in important ways from the Internet bubble of the '90s. That blip was fed by the promise of future billions that we were certain to realize from the web economy. Today's tech industry, on the other hand, is fed by the promise of future billions from the mobile economy.

It's a completely different economy. And unlike the web, which never caught on, people actually use mobile devices. [...]

Why should we assume that the thousands of new aspiring tech workers pouring into the Bay Area will decimate the arts, cultural diversity, tolerance, and neighborhoods of San Francisco, just because that's what happened last time? Technology is about innovation. If the industry destroys your city the same way twice, it hasn't done it right. We've obviously learned from our mistakes, the same way Wall Street has. [...]

These newcomers are not barbarians at our gates -- these are people whose values largely mirror those of the city dwellers they are ruthlessly pushing out. They're just like you, only whiter and able to live here. There's absolutely no rational reason to expect you won't enjoy knowing they're living in what used to be your apartment.