Cities and Ambition
paulgraham.com
Cities and Ambition
1–10 of 313 posts
Re: Cities and Ambition
#2Seriously, mqt, do you have a script that just sits there and polls paulgraham.com/articles.html for changes?
Re: Cities and Ambition
#3Raised by an academic and musician/programmer in Palo Alto, I wanted to start a salad dressing business when I was 13 before Whole Foods had already taken over the country. I would have, but didn't realize I could by olive oil wholesale and buying retail wasn't profitable. It wasn't until I moved to Manhattan that I started my first business at 22. Now, I'm about to get going with something online and am most likely going to move (temporarily) to Israel . Smart, ambitious, talented people and a much lower cost of living than in America. Sometimes being an outsider can be motivating.
We'll see how it goes. I'm psyched.
Re: Cities and Ambition
#4Seriously, mqt, do you have a script that just sits there and polls paulgraham.com/articles.html for changes?
paulgraham.com has an RSS feed. So it probably just shows up in his RSS reader, and then he submits it.
Re: Cities and Ambition
#5Seriously, mqt, do you have a script that just sits there and polls paulgraham.com/articles.html for changes?
paulgraham.com has an RSS feed. So it probably just shows up in his RSS reader, and then he submits it.
And here I was wondering why there was no RSS feed on the essays page.
Re: Cities and Ambition
#6(Not directly related, only some annotations:)
New ideas easily win over any sort of ambition:
But cities are too distracting for really new ideas:
In order for them to happen, you need the quiet of some sort of island (in any sense).
(BTW, where are you coming from, exactly? The isle of GB, and the isle of Lisp, right?)
Re: Cities and Ambition
#7"New York tells you, above all: you should make more money. There are other messages too, of course. You should be hipper. You should be better looking. But the clearest message is that you should be richer.
What I like about Boston (or rather Cambridge) is that the message there is: you should be smarter. You really should get around to reading all those books you've been meaning to."
From two years ago here: http://web.archive.org/web/20070102025129/http://paulgraham.... :
"I find every ambitious town sends you a message. New York tells you "you should make more money." LA tells you "you should be better looking." Rome tells you "you should dress better." London tells you "you should be hipper." The Bay Area tells you "you should live better." And Cambridge tells you "you should read some of those books you've been meaning to.""
Re: Cities and Ambition
#8> Maybe the Internet will change things further. Maybe one day the most important community you belong to will be a virtual one, and it won't matter where you live physically. But I wouldn't bet on it. The physical world is very high bandwidth, and some of the ways cities send you messages are quite subtle.
I detect an opportunity...
Re: Cities and Ambition
#9I wrote this four months ago in an email to a friend of mine:
"San Francisco is definitely a great area, and you should at least visit some day. There's a vibe there that's completely different from anywhere else I've ever been. It is hard to explain. You just go there and you feel it. Things seem possible out there that would be laughed at here. That's the best way I can put it.
Every city that I've been to has a certain feel to it. New York is rude and busy. Portland is relaxed and thoughtful. San Francisco is ambitious and free-spirited. Atlanta is comfortable and complacent. Atlanta's feel was good for growing up, and it is one that's good for growing old if you're willing to play it conservatively and live a life of moderate wealth and complacency. But if you're not, you should go to a city that has a better feel for what your goals are at that stage in your life.
Does that make sense? I'm by no means trying to convince you to go to San Francisco, but for me it was important that I travelled around and discovered the city that had the right feel for me. Portland was very close, and San Francisco is nearly spot on. I have no doubt you'll be somewhat different. Give it a try though, eh?"
Its like PG read my email and decided to write an essay on it.
Re: Cities and Ambition
#10> you should be more powerful.
The subsequent "effect you have on the world" is a far better description of the bay area than "power". I think that in terms of actual "power", as in Washington DC power, the bay area is underrepresented for the amount of money there.