I had the pleasure of visiting Dublin, Ohio again last month to speak at the Smart Cities Workshop produced by the ICF Institute there. Led by Doug McCollough (pictured right), the Institute is Dublin’s contribution to the development of central Ohio and the entire state based on ICF’s Community Accelerator Strategy.

“You can’t just say let’s have all this macroeconomic growth and not focus on every district . . . Make sure that you understand that it is a bad thing for America that my district has $10 trillion of company value and other districts are totally in despair.”

– US Congressman Ro Khanna, Democrat representing Silicon Valley district.

Ahh, the digital economy. Supercharged with opportunities your city, county or region can't afford to miss. Software companies. Gaming companies. Silicon chip foundries. Silicon chip designers. Software-as-a-service companies. Makers of computers, tablets, phone and smart watches. Social media companies. Ecommerce companies. Video streaming companies. It’s a vast digital wave washing across the world.

Butyn is a rural locality in the Odintsovsky District in Moscow Oblast, Russia. It is listed as having 180 residents. The hamlet is in the western portion of Golitsyna, which like many places, has a population that continues to decline. It was down to about 17,000 in 2010.

It has one fewer son this year.

Butyn is not an Intelligent Community but Butyn is the birthplace of the (as-of-recently) late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Social, economic and political division have a cost. I suspect we can all agree on that, despite our divisions. But how much is it?

In 2023, two ratings agencies downgraded the credit worthiness of the United States. Their reason? Division, specifically the repeated down-to-the-wire debt ceiling battles that threatened the government’s ability to pay its bills. The agencies admitted the downgrades would have no immediate impact on America’s ability to borrow. That word “immediate” reminded me a Hemingway character who, when asked how he went bankrupt, said, “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

The price is hard to measure because, most of the time, it is about lost opportunity. Take local government. When voters are divided, they alternately elect leaders of wildly different beliefs about the right way to govern, often with the speed of Dr. Jekyll turning into Mr. Hyde and back again. Each set of leaders condemns the work of their predecessors and starts building something new, only to see it torn down again with the next change of office. Forward motion freezes and, with it, the ability to seize the opportunities streaming by.

After the hard years of pandemic, the Dublin Institute returned to its regular programming on September 29 for the Intelligent Communities and aspiring cities and regions in central Ohio. It was once called the Rust Belt, but the middle of this American state has become an innovation engine in both business and government. 

I told them.

I told them when I was in Vietnam during my first visit there in December 2016. I told them at a talk I gave to the leadership of its new “rocket to the future,” the smart city of Binh Duong. I told the big shots from its government what they were building.

I told them that in my country (the USA), the hope of the tortured 20th Century was given a boost by the landing on the Moon. It gave people everywhere a new sense of hope, a feeling of possibilities and wonders to come. The technology that flowed from the innovations that had to take place to get men on the Moon, over time, became part of the global economy and embedded in the world we live in today, especially the world of communications. It fed engineering schools new, inspired students who wanted to go to work for NASA or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory or General Foods, makers of Tang, the first orange drink mix the astronauts had with them in space! It enabled young, aspiring poets like me to wonder about the workings and nature of the universe, which had opened up like the clouds of a Renaissance painting.

Here’s a New York fact that may surprise you: 14 of the 32 violinists in our New York Philharmonic are of Korean descent. A sweet song to sing for Koreans when you consider that only 14% of New Yorkers are of Asian descent.

But why am I surprised?

Last night, I walked down the block to pick up my chicken parmesan take-out from my favorite place on East 69th Street. Outside my back door, the first thing I run into is the Mexican food cart. There were 6 people there – delivery guys chatting in Spanish, as is usually the case around that time of evening.

The 1982 Disney movie, Tron, contains a valuable lesson on the power of the digital systems user today.

In the movie, released 40 years before ChatGPT, the hero is transferred bodily into a computer system under the control of an evil AI. Because he’s the good guy, he tries to lead a revolt, mostly in vain. But just when things look bleakest, he discovers that he has “user power.” Simply by willing it, he can make magical things happen in this alternate universe. Because, under the digital skin, he’s a human being who uses computer systems, not the other way around.

I get territorial when it comes to pride of place. It may be the psychic balm for the chronic case of homesickness I get whenever and wherever I travel.

With the exception of my university years, I have lived an entire life in the state of New York. In three places. I have lived in New York City for 40+ years. I grew up in the Finger Lakes region of the state, and for the past 20 years, spend time at a residence in Long Island in the eastern part of the state.

These places have been – for the most part – wonderful places for someone with my temperament. I have lived the life I dreamed of and wanted. I have built communities and friendships that are solid and long-lasting within the circumference of a few city blocks and internationally!

Whenever I get back from a trip – as happened recently upon my return from the Urban Future Conference #uf23 in Stuttgart – someone invariably says: “Oh, you went there? That’s on my bucket list.”

When I gave a TED Talk in Rio de Janeiro a few years ago, same thing. When I spoke at the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 in Oslo, ditto. “On my bucket list.”

Once in a while, someone will ask me: “What’s left on your bucket list?”

Nothing. I never had one.