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There was the following passage in a bit old article of Time magazine (November 18, 2013) under the title, “Step Away From the Phone Game, Mom” with a sub-headline: People are wasting a lot of time. They should really leave that to the professionals.

The Internet, it turns out is a bad capitalist. And it’s shrinking the 1% down to the people Who do things that are so awful, no one will do them for free; investment banking, consulting Petroleum engineering, using a Bloomberg terminal and being friends with Vladimir Putin. We’ve got to stop this domino effect by getting people to go back to playing dominoes. And talking in person. And pickling, knitting, crafting, making moonshine and- basically we need to find a way to move everyone to Brooklyn. Because if we don’t make ourselves stop wasting our time, the economy is going to be in real trouble.

Why do we need to move to specifically, Brooklyn, not any other bland places? What does 'Brooklyn' signify in the context of Internet age?

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    Brooklyn is, of course, a borough of New York City, and it carries a connotation (how well-deserved I don't know) of being the place where "real" people live -- the plumbers and carpenters and secretaries and shopkeepers.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Dec 13, 2015 at 2:48
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    @HotLicks: Once upon a time that was true. These days, Brooklyn is better known as the center of hipster culture, one of whose main features is a fascination with old-fashioned and "artisanal" products and processes; things done by hand on a small scale. Pickling, knitting, crafting, and making moonshine would all fit in. (Brooklyn is home to a number of "craft distilleries" which are essentially the modern equivalent of moonshine.) So I think that's the reference that's intended. This may be less a question about language and more about culture, though.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Commented Dec 13, 2015 at 5:00
  • @Nate Eldredge. I'm not asking so much about culture. I'm simply asking the contextual meaning of the English language; a word, "Brooklyn" used here, namely, how do you paraphrase the word , a proper noun, "Brooklyn" in a single or a set of English words?
    – Yoichi Oishi
    Commented Dec 13, 2015 at 6:35
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    It's really hard to guess precisely what connotation the author meant.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Dec 13, 2015 at 14:20
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    @YoichiOishi Brooklyn is a specific place - specifically, it's part of New York City. If the author had been making a different point, she may as well have used Tokyo or Los Angeles or Dublin. The meaning in context here is entirely down to the cultural reference implied by this particular place.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Commented Dec 14, 2015 at 6:01

1 Answer 1

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Brooklyn has some special characteristics/meanings that other cities don't have in the US history.

  1. It was a very big city on its own before it was consolidated with New York City in 1898. Brooklyn and New York were called the Twin cities. Brooklyn was the third-most-populous American city for much of the 19th century. With population of appr. 2.6 million, it would still be the 5th largest city in the U.S., but it is not a city any more.

  2. Brooklyn symbolized the American dream with rapidly growing population, diverse ethnicity and industrialization in the 19th century. However, after its consolidation, New York became more prominent while Brooklyn became just one of the five boroughs slowly losing its name recognition. It even lost its pro baseball franchise Brooklyn Dodgers where the first black American Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier for the first time in the U.S. baseball history.

Detroit symbolizes automobile industry, LA movies and entertainment/show businesses, NY pop culture and financial industries and Houston oil industry. What Brooklyn symbolizes might not be as distinct as other cities mentioned, however, it represents things that are old and lost its prominence.

Using the context, the writer clearly wants to contrast new things (internet, investment banking, consulting petroleum engineering, using Bloomberg terminal, etc.) with something old that was related with pickling, knitting, crafting, making moonshine. The writer seems to have judged Brooklyn is the most appropriate name for that purpose.

[Wikipedia]

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  • -1, the author clearly has a more modern image of Brooklyn in mind.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Commented Dec 14, 2015 at 5:55
  • @LessPop_MoreFizz You seem to have a mind-reading skill. Good for you.
    – user140086
    Commented Dec 14, 2015 at 5:58
  • not mind reading. Just close reading and a familiarity with Brooklyn and what it has come to symbolize in modern American culture. (Among other things, artisanal pickles and small batch craft moonshine.)
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Commented Dec 14, 2015 at 5:59
  • @LessPop_MoreFizz Why not post an answer yourself? There is no way that you can know whether the author has a more modern image of Brooklyn just reading the context provided above. How do you define the word modern, by the way?
    – user140086
    Commented Dec 14, 2015 at 6:07
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    @YoichiOishi Thanks. LessPop_MoreFizz might be right and the above is primarily opinion-based. I am a fan of your questions. :-)
    – user140086
    Commented Dec 15, 2015 at 4:18

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