Detroit. Maybe the cheapest real-estate in the country, and still a major city with folks to date, bars, an NHL, NFL, and MLB team. A burgeoning tech scene, and East Lansing and Ann Arbor (home of Michigan State and UofM, respectively) are a couple hours drive in a state where that's not a big deal to most people, even once or twice a week.
"if someone comes to you and says, 'Let's do this in Flash,' you say no."
Silverstein was concerned on this point. He raised his hand. "We're using Flash," he said, as the class spun around to look at him, some nodding comfortingly. "And I think it's leaving us out of mobile. But can I just tell my programmer to change it? Can he put it through a translator?"
"Yes, and you can," said Friedman. "Like through a sausage maker."
---
First of all, this is just false, plainly untrue. This just reads like a class to teach old money and others who are in a position to hire programmers, but who don't know much about programming themselves, to fake being knowledgeable to get a good price. In other words, it allows those with money and influence avoid having to learn a new way of doing business, perpetuating their privilege at the expense of people who have actually put in enough time to grok the difference between the web and the net.
If you have access to enough technology to know "know what 'the Facebook' is or how to text a selfie" then you have no class barrier preventing you from knowing "the difference between Java and Javascript."
A trade is something to be cultivated, earned and, most importantly, paid for handsomely by those who haven't taken the time to learn it. If you don't know the difference between a car that's overheating and spewing blue smoke from one that hums and shifts well, then you don't don't deserve to get a good deal on a used car. The same principle applies here.