Daniel Patrick Moynihan

If the cliché “Ignorance is Bliss” were true, legal marijuana would go up in smoke. Our ignorance would be sufficient to keep us happily stoned. In our state of Bliss, we would be sublimely governed, assured that our rights were fully secured and knowing that our daily bread would produce loaves plentiful enough for generations. Would World Peace be far behind for dummies and cafones?

But as that bothersomely observant Greek Plato said about ignorance and its consequences, “Those who believe they are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.” (Write in your own association to modern times here. _________ I’ll wait.)

One of my heroes, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was a sharp observer of the human community. He famously reported on the utter collapse of the family and the coarsening of our social relations. He concluded famously, “We have defined deviancy downward.”

There are three ways a community enters the 21st Century and becomes an Intelligent Community. The first two are like choosing root canal. The third is the option to floss and brush.

Amirzai Sangin, the former Minister of Communications & IT for the Republic of Afghanistan makes an exclusive appearance at the ICF Summit on Thursday. Mr. Sangin was ICF’s Visionary of the Year in 2006 and has written a new book about his experiences in Afghanistan.

One: A region, community or an entire nation can swerve with near fatal consequences and smack into its moment of truth. It there meets the realities and requirements of the digital age. It is dragged out and hopefully recovers enough to be dragged in to the right lane. This collision often is the result of a total economic or social collapse caused by a tsunami. History does not always signal when it changes lanes. So the local industry begins to fade into the dusty pages of economic history without much warning. More often than not a company or a cluster of them, those upon which prosperity had been built, chases after some hot little trophy city in the Sunbelt. Or sails off to a country in Asia where the workers are still climbing toward the middle class and willing to work for unthinkably low wages. In this case, the community is in desperate shape and reaches out like a man caught swimming in a riptide. The good news is that if you do not panic and go laterally for a while, you can get out of a riptide.

What do Intelligent Communities know that others do not? The Answer: Epistemic Humility.

I know. It’s cryptic. I’ll explain later.

US President Biden has proposed a $109 billion, 10-year American Families Plan that seeks to build an economy that does more for working people and less for people who live on the returns from their investments. One part of the plan would fund free 2-year community college tuition for all students. In response, a recent article in The New York Times sets out to answer the question, “Does Free College Work?”

It’s a very American question, by the way, because our friends in Europe and other regions have been receiving largely free higher education for decades. Setting that aside, the article is worth reading for two reasons.

This open letter was written to the communities around the world that make up our network.

Dear Friends and Members of the Intelligent Community Network,

One of the strengths of community is the ability to bond and support one another, especially in times of challenge, crisis or good fortune. As you are aware from your own experience the COVID-19 Pandemic has brought hardship to most places and is one of the most difficult public health challenges in a century. Most of you have been managing well and using the principles to keep your family and friends safe.  Today, I am writing to you because one of our Intelligent Communities has found itself struggling with COVID.

Will you be living on an Intelligent Street?

In a post Covid world I anticipate a much different respect for the hyper-local aspects of communities than we exhibited before the pandemic. Over the time we stayed closer to our homes we discovered our neighborhoods, local markets and restaurants and the street in front of our homes. We got to know our neighbors, the local store clerks, and our postal service delivery representatives. I am certain that once we feel confident to once again travel further than our neighborhoods, we will explore cities, regions and international destinations once again.

“Our police are more trusted in our republic than our president.”

Here’s a “pop” quiz: name the source of that quote.

Hint: It does not come from an authoritarian leader of a country. Nor does it come from the United States in 2021.

It comes from representatives of the world’s most Intelligent Community: Tallinn, Estonia. It is part of a new podcast series that is my attempt to begin to get to the raw, poignant and seemingly intractable issues our communities continue to grapple with in this Era of COVID.

Environmental sustainability and energy transition: Taiwan steps up battle to cut carbon emissions and achieve Net-Zero by 2050

While the world is experiencing the Covid-19 outbreak since 2020, the most searched keyword in 2021 is net zero emissions. This implies that climate change is going to be another battlefield, because no one is immune to its effects. For this reason, U.S. President Joe Biden has promised to invest US$2 trillion in the next four years to build a green energy economy and promote the development of clean energy in the United States. Governments around the world have also actively promoted net-zero emissions to stop climate change from getting worse.

In April 2021, 131 countries including the European Union, the United States, South Korea, and Japan made more active emission reduction commitments at the Leaders Summit on Climate. The United Kingdom and the European Union both updated their mid-term (2035) carbon reduction targets to reduce carbon emissions by 78% and 55%, respectively, and reach a net-zero carbon emission target by 2050. As a member of the global village, Taiwan jumps on the bandwagon to get to zero carbon by 2050.

There is a children’s book, which became an animated movie, about a town destroyed by giant pieces of food falling mysteriously from the sky. It turns out a similar thing can happen when the objects falling from on high are big bales of cash.

In 2015, ICF named Columbus, Ohio, USA as its Intelligent Community of the Year. The very next year, the city beat out 77 other small and midsize US cities for a grant of $50 million from the Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge. (Its status as IC of the Year helped.) Its winning bid called for many cool projects: Wi-Fi-enabled kiosks to help residents plan trips, apps to pay bus and ride-hail fares and find parking spots, autonomous shuttles and sensor-connected trucks.