I think it is culture with a pinch of geopolitics. You can't replicate a Silicon Valley without grokking SV culture. I have yet to meet a fellow Irish in the f

I think it is culture with a pinch of geopolitics. You can't replicate a Silicon Valley without grokking SV culture. I have yet to meet a fellow Irish in the flesh who understood it, any of it, except perhaps at a Hackerspace one time in a different European country. Europeans should do as the Japanese did with the English/Dutch before they made the foreign technologies their own. Synchronize with the hive. Places like SSC, LW, HN. Read their books. Think their thoughts. That's part of why I spend some time here. Perhaps, like the Japanese, we would pick up things we do not quite need, like umbrellas and Victorian pocket doors, but also something less tangible, less capable of being denoted on a PowerPoint presentation. Silicon Roundabout and other government led projects are Cargo Cults.