I appreciate the caution expressed in the essay; that it is unclear both that an event is on its way and that location is necessarily decided. No doubt SV is the capital of startups, but I still think in the world of startups it is slightly different than Hollywood or Wall Street because you can do it with little money or connections. The distribution of startups across the world remains to be seen, but I agree often it will depend on who is offering the money.
To address the randomness of the revolution, I sincerely hope someone out there is developing some kind of portal to find all of these neat tools being developed. There are several YC apps in faq.html that, when put together, give many people no reason to really have any desktop software at all.
Just as an example, let's say a school teacher uses her computer for email, web browsing, managing files, photo editing, and maintaining her second grade web site. Gmail, (some browser), dropbox, snipshot, and splashup/weebly would be all she needs.
If all these websites were somehow organized in a way that said teacher can easily find them, then I think a 'startup revolution' would be more likely: people could go to a central website to browse for startup that meets their needs.
To address the randomness of the revolution, I sincerely hope someone out there is developing some kind of portal to find all of these neat tools being developed. There are several YC apps in faq.html that, when put together, give many people no reason to really have any desktop software at all.