Welp I guess thiss is where I chime in.

I live in San Francisco. I pay $800/month for a room in a house, which as far as things go in the city is pretty good deal. I'm studying computer science and building a new social network (it's gonna be a good one), and hope to live and work in the city for the rest of my life. I was born and raised in Silicon Valley, with tech in my blood. My dad's an engineer, he did some thing about disk drives for IBM in the nineties that was a big deal, but I'm not entirely sure of the details. I grew up in one of those $1m+ suburban houses you talked about, although we were about a half mile from the store so not really as isolated as what you described. I never really appreciated that until I moved to the city, but they're really peaceful places, and incredibly safe. I once left my car open with a bunch of expensive electronics in it on the street, forgot about it, and when I came back nothing was even out of place. We knew the neighbors, although for the most part everyone kept to themselves. Polite conversations when we were out walking the dogs.

I think there is a certain "new toy" syndrome that is incredibly common among people out here, which certainly sells new iphones and tablets and whatnot, but I'm unconvinced that's a bad thing. It's "Pop Progress" - the iPhone 6 is to technology what Kesha is to music. There's a culture here that's massively progress and innovation oriented, and that manifests itself as smartwatches and smartrings. In turn, that drives advances in all sorts of other things - driverless cars, drone delivery, eBay/Amazon, apps, etc... It's certainly enabled by the immense wealth of the region. My point is, of course we're immensly concerned with new technologies. That's what we do.

I would like to dispute your claim that 80% of Californians have never been out of the state. Of course we're both speaking anecdotally, and my perspective reflects a very different upbringing than yours, but a Califonian who's never been out of the state is something of a rarity in my experience. Not unheard of, but mostly everyone I meet has been somewhere else at some point. Not to mention that around here, most people aren't even from the state in the first place!

$2k a month for a one-bedroom apartment is insane, that would buy a pretty nice pad downtown. I'm not sure what the prices are like out where you're from, but that is pretty incredible to me.

There's not really much of a logical thread to this, I just fired of things as they jumped to mind. I'm sure there's loads I didn't address. If anyone cares, I'd be happy to elaborate.