I was just reading the Global Voices Online blog (excellent blog, rarely is about tech, but brings lots of news and opinions from around the world) and saw this post about an Iranian blogger who is tired of having her blog “filtered” by its government.
On Sunday Maryam took me to a party of Iranians she knows (the host was the one who got us our loan for our house). Lots of engineers. My brother-in-law is there. He’s working on some secret stuff for Apple. Won’t tell me what’s up. But, his role is key.
If you look around Silicon Valley you’ll see lots of immigrants who are making the technology that fuels the companies, both big and small here.
See, we’ve imported smart people from all over the world. From places that have governments that mistreat their citizens.
As long as those places continue mistreating their citizens, the United States will remain dominant in tech and other geeky endeavors.
Our trick is not to mistreat our immigrants so they keep coming here.
One other thing I learned from the Iranian party where I was one of only two American-born people (the other was my son)? Every single one of them loves our Thanksgiving holiday, even though none of the food is a staple in Iran. I think it’s partly that they are thankful a place like USA exists so they can come and work on things they want without having some government goon turning off their work (or their blog).
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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.
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