Monday, April 07, 2008

Pointillist Pittsburgh

Our fair city has long had a reputation, deserved or not, for being a Backwater Bastion of Provincialism and for being slow to embrace emerging trends and the avant-garde.

As Mark Twain once said, "When I die, I want it to happen in Pittsburgh because it will take another 20 years for it to catch up to me."

One may argue how richly this reputation is deserved, for the city also has a rich pedigree of innovation in research, medicine, technology, manufacturing and knowledge leadership.

Still … every once in a while … some of our denizens say or do something so monumentally pointillist that it only reinforces and perpetuates the widely held perception of provincialism, defensiveness and laughable small-mindedness.

Case in point: "Pittsburgh couple sues Google over Street View"