EP 1004 San Francisco Plays Many Roles in Our Imagination and Now a New One as the AI Hub

What comes to mind if I say San Francisco–the hippies and Grateful Dead of the 1960’s, the locus of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s, the Internet revolution of the 1990’s, the urban decay of the pandemic era or the AI revolution that is clearly upon us?  Well, I think the best answer is all of the above.  The city is a complicated mix of culture, technology, business and a growing class divide.  There may be no better chronicler of the city than Jonathan Weber who has been covering this beat for different media outlets since the early 1990’s.  All of his knowledge and sense of place are married in his great new book, “City on the Edge: Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco.”  He dispels the notion that many of us have had that San Francisco and Silicon Valley are interchangeable.  They are very different places. Both have been crucial to modern-day America.  When you think San Francisco remember that e-publishing, social media, video streaming, cloud software and the sharing economy really came to life there. Enjoy this fascinating conversation.

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