Flutterby™! : Tech Sex

Via Yet Another Web Log. I have regular discussions with my friends in Chattanooga, and for a while the subject was often "why don't you come back?" One of my answers was that when I got an enterprise funded and running, I'd have trouble attracting qualified people to work with, despite the tremendous natural beauty and recreational opportunities that the Chattanooga area affords. I remember a long rant complaining about the lack of strip-clubs and regular police harassment of adult book stores, which, when shown to some of the people trying to build business incubators, was completely misunderstood. Anyway, apparently I was closer than I thought, there's a huge correlation between high tech innovation and gay populations. Richard Florida, (apparently formerly) of the Center for Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon, wondered why high tech firms like Lycos started at Carnegie Mellon all left the area. They discovered from 1990 census data that the highest correlation of any factor with high tech vitality was with the population of unmarried same-sex partners. Sorry, Chattanooga, unless a lot of repressed rednecks start coming out you're stuck doing tourism and light manufacturing...