Everyone who has ever visited Venice as a tourist probably went there with some limited baggage of knowledge about the town. A former center of very powerful Venetian Republic is, as the modern story goes, now full of tourists, almost abandoned by locals, sinking. Reality is, of course, much less grim. When I stayed there in March â€” it’s the low season there â€” Venice presented itself as a very lively small town. You stroll around and see kids return from school across the bridge of Calle Bandi in Cannaregio and groups of students from the nearby Academy of Fine Arts playing guitar in Dorsoduro.

One comparison held very strongly on my head the entire time I spent in Venice. What I saw around was, figuratively speaking, what San Francisco will look and feel like in three or four centuries. Bounded by water on almost every side, it’s now just as restrained from further growth and almost as wealthy compared to its modern peer cities now as Venice was at its heyday. In the coming centuries the technology â€” that San Francisco will ultimately represent â€” will only grow in importance in everyone’s life and will help it prosper further. The best artists will lend their skills to making the future San Francisco the most refined city for those living there. The unstoppable gentrification will continue to purify the city fabric, eventually turning it into something as beautiful and uniform as Venice’s Centro storico.

It will all be fine for San Franciscans until the technology will stop to matter (because everything eventually does). Maybe the new human psycho-powers will be discovered in, say, Cologne â€” it for sure will be Germans with their sense of irrational who will do it, â€” rendering the entire technology industry obsolete. After the period of San Francisco decline we’ll visit it, marvel at the hills and the architecture, and then will all be looking for “non-touristy typical San Franciscan restaurant”.