California’s Successful Dilettantes
The State Leads In Innovation Because It Welcomes Hippies, Eccentrics, and the Aimless
American tinkering, which is the engine of American innovation, traces its roots way back to the Founding Fathers. But contemporary American tinkering owes a lot to the California counterculture, the preservation of which is vital to our national future.
I spent two years thinking and writing about the American tinkering spirit, but only after my book was published did I detect its distinct West Coast vibe. Great tinkerers are rarely experts or specialists. Rather, they are dilettantes who know a little about a lot of things and just enough to think …
