Tyler Cowen once said in an interview that San Francisco / Silicon Valley is a “diverse monoculture”. It’s the “diverse” part that gives its creativity, and the “mono-culture” part that gives it efficiency. That’s the benefit of being diverse monoculture. And that’s what makes Bay Area, Bay Area.

This also infers a good chance that next century will be less innovative than this.

Because a lot of innovations and ideas come from intense cultural interchange and connectivity. But in the continual open system, eventually the stronger culture will absorb the weaker, or both cultures become a well-mixed one, until it can’t. Whatever the most creative clusters, like the one in San Francisco Bay Area, are in the process of “cashing in” the creativities which benefits from the open system, until it can’t.

In order to have a sustainable “creativity” to cash in, some sort of insulation matters. Insulation allows a culture to grow and realize its own unique form without distractions from the other frameworks.

That’s why Madagascar has its unusual types of wildlife because the island is so isolated from the rest of the world that it can evolve its eco-system. That’s why we should have the annual fishing band period to preserve organisms so they have time to grow before fully exploited.

“I think you’re a uniquely brilliant, twisted, inward-looking, diverse monoculture, and I’m very glad you are. 😜 ” – Tyler Cowen