The week-long desert festival known as Burning Man might seem like an odd place for Silicon Valley types and assorted artists and free-spirits to unwind, especially since cell-phones won’t work, the internet is more or less unavailable (sometimes due to dust storms) and business is outlawed.

Then again, maybe it all makes perfect sense. After all, if you work alone the idea of physically mingling with 50,000 people is quite attractive. If you look at a screen all day then building giants sculptures (and often setting fire to them) does have a kind of primal attraction.

And if you work in a highly orchestrated corporation then the idea of a week long ‘out of office’ jam session is quite contagious.

Most of all I suspect that the real reason people enjoy this festival is a mixture of community and physical accomplishment overlayed with a joyous lack of technology and unwanted digital interruption.

Or is there another explanation?