The best acts of defiance are made in pursuit of a greater good. History is complete with tales of passive resistance, armed rebellions and legends of a person or group of dedicated souls who refuse to sell-out, cave-in or toss-down the towel, no matter how overwhelming the forces stacked against them or the depth of corruption from a perverse civil order. You and I honor the private inspirations in our lives who get us out of bed and roll us forward, somehow putting in us a deeper psychic mark and recalibrated moral settings. Those whose actions are given the stamp of the “heroic” or “visionary” after their time of persistence are seen to have been clearly on the right side of the cause, while most could only see through the glass darkly. They are, in the words of my father, not deliberate and intentional provocateurs, but people who simply “stuck by their guns.” At ICF we have 145 of them.

There are seminal moments in the life of these communities. They are the result at times of small acts of unexpected expression. Something like inspiration builds, and because the community is a canvas, remains untouched, until inspiration strikes. These things come as shocks. There are profound acts of empathy, sometimes directed by a policy and sometimes by a spirit, which stagger us and bring us back to our moral GPS. A few days before we announced our new Top7, one occurred in the midst of a harsh winter afternoon in New York, when a perfect stranger on a rolling Subway took off his own shirt and gave it to a perfect stranger who happened to be homeless and shirtless: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xiKgeqUDDY. Some people were humbled; others didn’t believe it.

“Empathy,” says author Jen Percy, “starts as an act of fiction. We must think ourselves into the lives of others.” Certainly this was an act of empathy, but also one of defiance. Defiance of the stereotype that here in my city we are all cold-hearted citizens. Defiance too of the notion that all of us believe there is a gap between citizens on the basis of mental health or economic distance.

Defiance must be part of an Intelligent Community. It must also be bred from their fictions. The myths which define and anchor us to the story of the places we call “home” drive us into the future and propel us to believe that things will be better. It is at the core of the fifth criteria of our awards program and index: Advocacy.

When I think of defiance, I think of Defiance. Defiance, Iowa that is. The tiny American hamlet got its name because its townspeople had at one time actually relocated from another settlement because they were unhappy that the railroad company had not laid tracks in the old place. They were forever known as 'defiers.' They believed it and lived up to the myth. Despite its pipsqueak population, 284 people, it proudly produced a state governor, Mr. C.A. Robins. Governor Robins was the 22^nd governor of the state. The state of Idaho, far away. A governor is a governor and while tiny Defiance has not tossed itself into the ring for Intelligent Community status yet (Dubuque beat them to the honor of becoming Iowa’s first Intelligent Community last year, when it made our list of Smart21) it seems to me to have the right stuff for our crowd!

Our crowd of 21 communities got a little thinner last week when we named a new Top7. I am certain that the motive to defy and to tell their tale to the world drives this group just as much as the need for a railroad drove Defiance. The Smart21 and the Top7 also needed the railroad. The new railroad is broadband. Each of the new Top7, at different times, and in different ways, made a decision to pull the trigger or stand down the gravity of economic failure that had pulled thousands of other counties, cities and towns steadily down in the post-Industrial era. They got their broadband rails down and began the hard work of turning into truly defiant places to challenge the status quo and create a better future. This year’s Top7 is a splendidly diverse group, which includes one city that has not yet reached its sixth birthday (New Taipei City, Taiwan) and another (Montreal, Canada) that lit the candles for its 350th year since formation. They will both share a stage in Columbus, Ohio (USA) in June. They are comrades because they both have defiance as part of their legacy. You will learn why when you get to Ohio in June.

Understanding the fictions and the myth which are the canvases of communities has been ICF’s way of getting at the details and the data of these places. Having done this since 1999, when Singapore took the prize as the first Intelligent Community of the Year, we felt it was time this year to take our evidence-based, objective metrics and to develop the first global Index of Intelligent Communities. You can read more about this on our website, but leave me to say that the big change is that for the first time, any community, any time of year can enter our awards program by submitting to us (at no cost) a survey form. When you do, you will also receive a report comparing your performance to our global data set. This will help you measure your progress and take the next step toward defying the odds and becoming an Intelligent Community. It will also help ICF take the next steps and publish reports at intervals, to give policy-makers, the media and planners a snapshot of the defiers. Those leaders at the grassroots who will move if the railroad and the renaissance don’t come to town soon. 

Get ready for the next industrial revolution. Change is inevitable. Get over it! And in today’s world, it will happen quickly.  The drivers for it are not only structural, political, scientific and economic, but also cultural and social. They are manifested through such things as products and services, platforms and processes, as well as how people, governments and organizations are willing to accept and work with them. On the horizon is a phenomenon that is already changing the way we live. Billions of machine–to-machine (M2M) connections are actively connecting devices and applications that people use everyday such as Amazon’s Echo, Google’s Nest, or Apple’s HomeKit. On the Smart City scene are digital programs ranging from water and air quality sensors to sensor-enabled trash collection, using data to improve efficiency, reduce costs and make better use of our limited resources. The Internet of Things (IoT), which includes M2M connections and sensor-enabled environmental data generators, will probably be one of the most revolutionary impacts on our communities and on our lives since the broad-scale adoption of the Internet. While over 15 billion devices are already connected with one another today including computers with mobile devices, medical and environmental sensors, and industrial and commercial machines, 85% of these devices and other things are still unconnected.  It is expected that 50 billion devices and applications will be connected by 2020. The growing adoption of IoT is driving businesses of all makes and sizes to bring about changes in the way they do business, service customers, attract and retain talented workforce and deal with supply chains.

According to Gartner, Inc., the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, IoT is also one of the most active areas for innovation. Gartner analysts say that IoT has potential as a breakthrough technology, but its complexities make it a high-risk endeavor.  Nevertheless, according to Cisco, the IoT market will be worth $19 trillion, including the private and public sectors by 2024. Soon, entire companies will dedicate their focus on the IoT marketplace. For instance, at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung said that by 2020, every product the company makes will be “smart” devices. 

In Waterloo Region, we have a rich history of being successful and entrepreneurial makers which our Mennonite and Germanic heritage can attest. Fast forward to the 21st century we too are entering the next industrial revolution…the Internet of Things. There are many local players making an impact in the IoT space. Technology developed by companies like IMS, Miovision, Aeryon Labs, Clearpath Robotics alongside startups like Alert Labs, StressWell IQ, Konectera, Medella Health to name but a few.  We can reap the economic benefits of bringing to Waterloo Region investment dollars and creating an environment of success and support by local stakeholders and organizations like the Accelerator Centre and Communitech. Most importantly, we should attract top talent from all corners of the globe to live, innovate and work here.

Our academic institutions are continuing to invest in research, infrastructure and training the 21st century knowledge worker.  Before IoT became the buzzword of the day, our schools had the expertise to educate at the nexus of hardware and software. Conestoga College has woven electronic & mechanical systems programming into their curriculum, and is well positioned with software development, sensors, prototyping and additive manufacturing labs to meet the demands of the marketplace. Truly one of the leading outfitted colleges in the nation and true to their roots, they’ve been working with industry to pull in projects that focus on high performance ICT enabled manufacturing.  University of Waterloo is building a $70m facility, Engineering 7, with the mission of “educating the engineer of the future”. They’re providing students cutting-edge research labs including those in emerging and disruptive technologies; garages for student design projects and specialized spaces such as machine shops, an electronic components shop, and the RoboHub for aerial vehicles and robotics testing. Business and computer science acumen developed at Wilfird Laurier University round out this robust technology ecosystem.  

By combining our solid roots in manufacturing and engineering with existing strengths in ICT, a qualified workforce and specialized IoT relevant disciplines, we may well have the ingredients for success. Our forefathers from another industrial era of innovation would be proud.

This article first appeared in MyLivableCity (www.mylivablecity.com).

The multi-billion-dollar circus that is the American Presidential election rolls ever on. We stand amazed that a billionaire real estate developer and reality TV star, spewing a sneering mix of lies and vitriol, dominates the Republican side of the contest. He is less a Presidential candidate than a walking Twitter account, with a gift for finding words and attitudes that speak powerfully to a segment of the American people.

Who is this segment? Who does The Donald speak for? Nate Cohen, writing in The New York Times, shared an analysis conducted by Civis Analytics in an article well worth reading. They are more likely to be white, male and 50 years old or older than the rest of the US population. They are more likely to have a tendency toward racism, which is why Trump’s most revolting views do not send them running. They are also short on higher education; his strongest support is in Census tracts where 20% or less of the population has, at minimum, a bachelor’s degree.

What does that add up to? To me, it is a description of people on the losing end of the broadband economy. The growth of the knowledge-based, innovation-focused economy, which so ruthlessly purges uncompetitive industries and companies, has stunted their job prospects and shrunk their hopes. They feel betrayed and angry. So an angry man – despite his riches, reputation and liberal leanings – is the only one who speaks what is in their hearts.

My friends and colleagues around the world may shake their heads at this American phenomenon. But that would be to miss the point. The same anger at being left behind is rising in Europe, fueled by endless recession and now massive migration. It is among the many forces tearing the Middle East apart and roiling Latin America as the commodities boom ends. There is literally no chance that Donald Trump will enter the White House, except perhaps on a visitor’s pass, because he has too few supporters and they are not likely voters. But like the canary in the coal mine, Trump is a sign of trouble that must be addressed. For all of its benefits, the broadband economy is bad news for part of our people and we ignore their needs at our peril.

When we look at the adoption of new technologies, there often seem to be two simultaneous divergent trends. The innovators and early adopters push the technology forward, making significant progress every year. The laggards still find many reasons not to use the technology.

The current state of videoconferencing provides a very strong example of this divergence.

While videoconferencing has been steadily increasing in the corporate world, it hasn’t really taken off. Each year, we see new predictions that this next year videoconferencing will be unavoidable.

The obstacles to widespread adoption of videoconferencing in the past included:

• Cost – which has decreased dramatically over the last few years
• Quality — the need for high broadband, low latency on both sides of the conversation, which gets better as bandwidth has generally increased
• Sunk costs that make people wary of investing more money — one estimate is that more than half of businesses have outdated hardware
• And, as always, human resistance or impediments to change of any kind.

In recent years, consumers have tended to adopt new technologies faster than big corporations do. But reliable data about usage of consumer video, like Skype Video or Apple FaceTime, is not readily available.

Nevertheless, the technology is moving forward with some interesting results.

Two weeks ago, Skype celebrated ten years of video calls by offering group mobile video conferencing.

Using through-the-screen-camera and a holographic illusion, DVETelepresence has worked to make videoconferences appear more natural to participants. This picture is one of my favorites. You’ll notice that to enhance the illusion they even embed the office plant on both sides of the screen, as if it really is to the side of the people who are remote.

Last week, 4Dpresence, a spinoff of DVETelepresence, announced the availability of their “holographic town hall” for political candidates and issues. Taking a page from India’s Prime Minister, who used videoconferences to appear all over that country during their last election, this company is offering to host candidates who can appear as if they are live holograms and interact with audiences. The company claims:

“In live venues, the patented holographic augmented reality podium is so bright the candidates appear more compelling than actually being there in person. The candidates and citizens engage each other naturally as if they are together in person.”

You can see a video on their website.

Personify offers what they call “Video Conversation, With a Hint of Teleportation”. The idea is to eliminate the background that an Intel RealSense 3D camera or a Primesense Carmine 3D cameravideo camera is picking up so that you and the people you’re talking to all seem to share the same virtual space.

Another version of teleportation for videoconferencing was featured a few months ago in a Wall St. Journal article titled “The Future of Remote Work Feels Like Teleportation: Virtual-reality headsets, 3-D cameras help make videoconferencing immersive”. As its author wrote:

“I have experienced the future of remote work, and it feels a lot like teleportation. Whether I was in a conference room studded with monitors, on a video-chat system that leverages 3-D cameras, or strapped into a virtual-reality headset inhabiting the body of a robot, I kept having the same feeling over and over again: I was there — where collaboration needed to happen.”  

The article focused especially on the use of virtual reality gear to achieve this effect. There is DORA from the University of Pennsylvania, in which a person uses the VR headset to see through the eyes of a mobile robot.

This month’s MIT Technology Review also highlighted the use of Microsoft’s Room Alive in an article titled “Can Augmented Reality Make Remote Communication Feel More Intimate? A Microsoft Research study uses augmented reality to project a life-size person into a room with you, perching them in an empty seat.”

Eventually, as the technology gets ever more interesting and intimate, some fraction of the laggards may finally adopt the new technology. Although as Max Planck noted about scientific progress, the adoption pattern may just be generational: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

So it’s interesting that “47% of US teens use video chat including Skype, Oovoo, Facetime and Omegle.”

In the meantime, the early adopters are getting all the economic and intellectual benefits that can only occur with the full communication that videoconferencing provides and texting/emails don’t. These people are literally seeing the real potential of global Internet communications and will likely reap the economic gains from realizing that potential.

It’s been clear for some time that the Internet can connect everyone around the globe – in theory. This opens up tremendous potential for collaboration, mutual economic growth, education and a variety of other benefits. We’ve seen many of those benefits, but we still haven’t touched the surface.

Among other reasons the true potential of a globally connected world hasn’t yet been realized is that many people still can’t communicate when they communicate – they don’t speak the same language.

So it has been interesting to me to see the recent improvements in real time translation on the Internet. I’m not talking about the translation of text that has been around for a couple of years through, for example, Google Translate of websites or even the very useful app, WordLens, which I have used in my travels when I had to read foreign signs.

No, the new improvements are in speech – taking speech from one language and ultimately, quickly converting it correctly into another language. Although text translation is not easy, speech introduces much greater challenges.

These new real-time voice translation services and devices aren’t perfect, but they’ve improved enough that they are usable. And that usability will begin to make all the difference.

Last year, Google took its Translate app into speech. You can see a quick video example here. Google claims it can handle 90 of the world’s languages.

Then, more recently, Skype made its Translator generally available, although it’s clearly still in a sort of test mode. For English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Mandarin, Skype describes its capabilities quite simply:

“You can call almost anyone who has Skype. It will translate your conversation into another language in near real-time. What someone else says is translated back in your language. An on-screen transcript of your call is displayed.”

They have a charming video of school children in the US and Mexico talking to each other somewhat awkwardly.

There’s another video, titled “Speak Chinese Like A Local” with an American photojournalist in China arranging a tour for himself.

This translation work hasn’t only be done in the US. The Japanese have also been busy at this task, in their own way.

While not using the Internet, a Panasonic translator – in the form of a smart megaphone – will be tested at Narita Airport to translate between Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English.

Then there’s the “ili”, a portable device (also not connected to the Internet) which translates between Japanese, Chinese and English. The company describes it as “the world’s first wearable translator for travelers”. They’ve posted a video athttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6ngM0LHxuU. The video is a strange combination of cute and creepy, but it gets the point across.

These developments have led some stories to proclaim the arrival of the universal translator of Star Trek. But as Trekkie experts say, unlike the one in Star Trek, this doesn’t read brains, which may have been a necessity to communicate with non-human species.  

On the other hand, if you only want to talk with other people, the new language translators are pretty good substitutes ;-) With more use, they can only get better, faster, all the while helping to improve understanding between people around the world.