INTERVIEW:
Question 1
You are the president of the World Wide Foundation for Smart Communities. When was the
formation of the foundation announced?
Answer
We chose to announce the formation of the foundation in San Diego in August on the
occasion of the moving of the International Sister Cities conference, which had about 1500
delegates from all over the world.
Question 2
And why did smart communities start?
Answer
The concept is an interesting one. I think it started in California about seven years ago.
California was thinking of developing a state-wide policy and developing statewide
systems, and we persuaded the governor of California, Governor Wilson, that power flowed
back to individuals and individual communities, and that the idea of a top-down policy
driven by the state or the nation was not going to work anymore. All of these national
policies, as nice as they sounded, did not really reach the people. Rather what we needed
to do was have each community take ownership of their own future, understand the power of
technology, and use it in their own individual lives and businesses. The essence of the
concept is that power no longer exists in national capitals, nor state capitals, but in
individual communities and within each individual business large and small.
Question 3
How can we define the concept of community?
Answer
What is important is that you first identify the community. It could be many communities,
we all live in different communities. We have professional communities, social
communities, and then we have just places where we live. All of them are important and all
of them need to understand that there has been a basic structural shift in the economy
that is going to effect jobs, wealth, and well-being well into the next millennium.
People, businesses, institutions, large and small, who do not understand this basic shift
are in trouble, because they are going to find themselves cut off from the mainstream of
economic development, They are going to find themselves grappling with the problems of
unemployment, crime, poverty, bad health care policies, and not know what to do with them
unless they understand the basic underlying trends that are shaping the 21st century.
Question 4
Can you give us some good examples of two different communities in California, like the
smart communities of San Diego or other communities in business?
Answer
Well, people talk about Silicon Valley and Smart Valley, and I applaud them for organizing
as an industry and developing a number of applications very quickly. But I would not call
Smart Valley a smart city. Why? We have learned that this is not about technology, and it
is not about applications. It is about quality of life, it is about culture and commerce,
it is about creating livable, sustainable communities that attract the knowledge worker,
provide education for their children, and provide employment throughout the community. It
is a place that attracts high technology industries to work and live and play. That is
very different from simply having a list of high-tech applications that you can hold up
and be proud of. San Diego, for example, does not have as many applications as Smart
Valley. But San Diego started very differently. San Diego said: "Who are we as a
region? Who are we as a people, what do we want to be?" Then, rather than simply look
at the technology and ask what was possible, we looked to the people and a large number of
groups from every sector of the economy and society ealised a change was coming. How are
we going to respond to the change? What do you want to be as a community? How do you find
the community? And then and only then did we talk about the kinds of applications we might
employ using technology to catapult the region into a high-tech information center.
Question 5
For example, an inventor in Silicon Valley said that the ultimate goal of technology is to
have people organized for themselves. Do you agree?
Answer
Technology is just a tool. It is a tool of this age. And I think he's right. It is a tool
for personal use and deployment. Too many people don't understand the power of the tool.
There are too many people who have been disconnected already from society because of the
shifts in the structure of the workforce. There are too many who are either too poor or
too old ,who have a great fear of the technology. We need to reach all of those people if
we are going to have an integrated productive, healthy community.
Question 6
What will happen for all the other people that have no education?
Answer
You've raised what we call the US$64,000 question. There are many, many new jobs
being created. There are an equal number, many will say more, jobs being eliminated. The
new jobs are in the knowledge sector. Those people who don't acquire new skills, those
people who don't see this steamroller coming are going to get smashed; they're going to
get disconnected, they're going to be unemployed, and it's going to increase the social
costs of doing business in the 21st century. Our schools, our universities, have not yet
transformed themselves. We are not educating people for this new age and it is a tragedy.
It is a world-wide dilemma that we're confronting right now.
Question 7
What's the biggest challenge in your opinion that technology makes to politics?
Answer
It provides access to information. Politicians can no longer hide in chambers,
they can no longer make decisions in isolation and walk away from the consequences because
of technology. This technology, satellites that span the globe, fiber optic cables which
criss-cross the ocean floor, nothing happens of importance anywhere in the world that
isn't known by everyone. This is the source of the shift of power. People know that
they're being hoodwinked. People know that they're not being well served by politicians.
Therefore it is not a good time for politicians. This is a time for the dreamers, the
explorers, the inventors, who are willing to plant trees for their children to sit under.
Question 8
What are the next steps for the foundation?
Answer
The foundation is in the process of organizing two future meetings. One in Los
Angeles with Mayor Riordan of LA, and another one in Japan in 1998. We're planning a
number of events all over the world to try to bring industry and government together, but,
most importantly, community leaders, because the problems that we're facing will not be
solved by government; they will not be solved by industry; they will not be solved by
community groups alone. They will only be solved in a new collaboration, where we see
decisions and ideas formulated and plans and implemented, where there's a consensus about
who we are and where we want to go. So we have to take advantage of the technology,
encourage participatory democracy, and give people the power to take charge of their own
future. And that means not letting the politicians get away with a decision without it
being questioned and challenged engaging them.
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