Visiting San Francisco

I recently realized that the Google Bus phenomenon has attracted the interest of reporters beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. It is almost as if it has become the new icon of a lifestyle that tries to blur the boundaries between work and play. (The fact that the blur is established by creating the illusion that all play should be work-related and all work should feel like play is another matter to be pursued at another time.) If, in fact, the Google Bus now has a worldwide reputation, then I can envisage a new generation of tourists for whom catching sight of one of them (and capturing it photographically) may hold more significance than all those wonderful views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and even the new span of the Bay Bridge. As Kurt Vonnegut said, so it goes.