finance-investment types and techies are going gaga with facebook’s brand spanking new NYC engineering operation and cornell’s new science school in roosevelt island…  not a day passes without the “silicone alley” is chanted all over the wires…

when the facebook center was announced, according to bloomberg news some facebook talking head said “New York has a strong history of innovation and is home to thousands of talented technical people, and we want them to help us solve the challenges of designing and building the next generation of Facebook” and, bloomberg himself said, according to the times “We want the next Facebook to start here the world’s No. 1 hub for information technology and social media”, noting the increase in tech investment and employment in NYC…

the reason ain’t “innovation”.  the reason is simple: NYC is cool, silicone valley (or silicone hills- whatever happened to austin?) ain’t…

and the driving force is the transformation of techies.  techies are finally conforming to the central casting’s description of hackers. it took about 20 years for the actual techies to catch-up with their hollywood images but they finally did.  and now they don’t want to live in ranch style adobes or hacienda style apartment buildings on the edge of the dessert with occasional pilgrimages to san francisco.  they want to live in lofts in the city.  they want vibrant nightlife, to use a cliche, not lame start-up parties where you’ll have to worry about driving afterwards.

the techies are getting hip, as in hipster, five years after gap caught up with hipsterism…

gone are the days of nerd geniuses of the valley and indian workhorses of coding centers.  the nerd geniuses simply cannot relate to social media and web 2.0 (let alone 3.0) and the indians are happy in jersey, virginia, kansas or academia, building their LANs, typing their codes away…

now is the time of the techie on spotify.  granted, they’re still in their earlier stages of evolution, still thinking the strokes are cool, but they’re getting there (if you don’t believe me check the spotify list of a programmer friend)…  some even discovered moby– the moby who even forgot himself.

they dress up like their williamsburg cousins, circa 2005 (ie. urban outfitters, ben sherman, thrift shops and other assorted cool stores of the decade past and the target’s and gap’s of today) and get drunk to obscure brooklyn rock bands in east village dives, or get googly eyed in the presence of their holly dj’s.  hell, some are even forming obscure rock bands or dj’ing themselves…

and they want to get laid.  not dream about getting laid, mind you, but actually aspire to get laid…  pre-marital sex is in the realm of possibilities for techies now…

you simply can’t retain this new techies in the valley.  they’re the techie 2.0s.  they need to be in NYC…  hence the shift…  RIP the valley..  trust me, it is a good thing– we need more techie 2.0s…