I am originally from a town in Iowa of ~100,000 people. When I go back and interact with people outside of my family, even though I try to be positive and think past the stereotypes, I still find that the majority of people are about 10 years behind the times (compared with San Francisco or New York).

I remember when I was in school, I was always surprised at how uninterested in and uninformed my friends were about new trends coming from the bigger cities – not just fashion or hair (hey, I was a teenager), but also restaurants, art, etc. Now I see this disinterest in more important ways – how to raise children that can get into good colleges and/or compete economically with the rest of the country, for example. They act as if ignoring what is happening in the rest of the country will prevent the changes from coming.

I would have thought this would have changed with the internet, but mostly it hasn’t. Why is this?