Biology was one of my favorite sciences in secondary school.  I liked it because it was descriptive rather than mathematical.  It was not about applying abstract rules to make numbers behave in peculiar ways.  It was about how real things fit together.  Or, in the case of those frogs we all dissected, how they came apart. 

If you have read anything about life sciences research lately, you know that this view of biology is very old school.  Since we figured out how to sequence DNA and to data-mine the resulting flood of information, we have been uncovering unbelievably complex chains of action and reaction at the microscopic level. 

And every time we think we understand the pieces of the puzzle, each piece seems to have within it yet another complex chain of action and reaction.  The deeper we look, the more we see.  The sheer interconnectedness of it all is mind-boggling. 

At the end of March, I will visit Oulu, Finland, one of our Top Seven Intelligent Communities of 2012.  And I am fully prepared to have my mind boggled. 

Not because Oulu is a world leader in life sciences research.  It is a remarkable place when it comes to technology innovation but its talents mostly lie elsewhere.  I am prepared for mental boggling because of the way that innovation in Oulu is driven by its cultural DNA.   

You function as a living, breathing whole in part because each cell in your body contains all of the genetic instructions for making a new you. That is pretty much how innovation seems to take place in this mid-sized city only 200 km south of the Arctic Circle. 

Whether the project is a broadband network or a tech incubator, success is built on intensive collaboration among partners in government, business and institutions.  In project after project, the story is the same.  It is as though the partners are cells in a single organism, each carrying the whole of Oulu’s cultural DNA. 

I’m sure they have their inter-organizational food fights and inevitable jockeying for position and influence.  That’s how cultures work.  But this culture of collaboration has enabled Oulu to ride through successive waves of economic change and keep coming out on top.  I look forward to seeing it, and I hope that this particular form of biology has not gone beyond my ability to describe how it works.

It would be a classic “good news, bad news” joke if it weren’t so serious.  A new study of American educational achievement from the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University shows that…

“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race.”

That is how Sean F. Reardon, the study’s author, described a gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income American students, which has grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.  The good news is that the color of our skins is no longer an automatic indicator of our educational achievement (see Obama, Barack).  The bad news is that the contents of our wallets increasingly are.  

Income inequality – with all of its educational, cultural, ethnic and social impacts – is the new American problem, and to a lesser extent, is a problem in all developed economies.  It is the direct product of globalization in the broadband economy, made worse by policies popular with an anxious electorate filled with nostalgia for a golden age that never was.  

Which makes Austin, Texas all the more remarkable.  Austin is the first of our 2012 Top Seven Intelligent Communities to be profiled on our Web site.  (You will need to log in or complete the free subscription form to read it.)

In Austin, they have recognized that their "home-grown" population largely does not participate in the community's red-hot technology economy – and that this is a threat to long-term prosperity and social health.  The public and private sectors together have developed multiple programs with ambitious goals to increase the number of native Austinites who graduate from secondary school, enroll in a 2-year or 4-year college and graduate successfully from that.  And they are getting results.  For the secondary school class of 2009, the graduation rate of low-income students jumped 14% to 75% overall.    

For any community struggling with similar issues, Austin has lessons to teach.  And the start of those lessons is just a click away. 

On my way to the Coral ballroom of the Mid-Pacific conference center, where I would name the new Top Seven last month, my mind was racing.  There were seven million details I was trying to process.  You know the feeling before a speech or a meeting:  a nervous mishmash as you scramble to put on your “game face.”

On the morning of the announcement my internal monologue was a ramble about the new Top Seven.  The top thoughts “trending” in my head were, “What would people think about three Canadian communities being on the list?” (Answer: Canadian communities have been pursuing the ICF’s goals in disproportionate numbers over the past decade and have begun to prove themselves in assessments by ICF’s juries.)  “How would I best describe the successful development strategy of Austin, Texas?” (Answer: I would say that it led to a surge in regional payrolls, and a 14% boost in graduation rates.)  “How would I compare a city with a mere 32,000 people (Stratford) to Taichung, Taiwan, with over two million?  (Answer: When it comes to intelligence, size does not matter.)  And how would I possibly describe the new, shared cloud-based engineering data bank in Taichung, which has speeded time to market for its small, entrepreneurial companies by significant margins?  (Answer: I would just say what I just wrote!)  Finally, how would I call out the digital divide programs which are essential to Riverside, California’s remarkable renaissance?  (Answer: I would invoke the Sermon on the Mount.  We do have an obligation to the least among us and it pays dividends that are often returned to us in ways that we have come to call “social capital.”)  

How could I make the success of these seven communities, each of which has delivered truly profound outcomes, as entertaining as possible in a mere 20 minutes onstage?  I decided to create a slide with a photograph of a pahu, an traditional Hawaiian drum, and ask the audience to beat their hands on the table as I began the countdown.  (It worked and it was fun.)

As I was thinking about these things and nearly running, I had a moment when the buzzing in my head stopped and I confronted what the Irish author James Joyce called an “epiphany.”  It was quite unexpected.

Heading toward the escalator to the Mid-Pacific, I made eye contact with an elderly man, who was standing in front of the Maui Clothing Company shop.  He was on holiday, and I am guessing was retired.  What I noticed was that that he wore a hat identifying him as an American military veteran of the Korean War.  I once had mixed feelings about veterans “advertising” their service like this, but I have changed.  After all, how else would we know?  Hawaii is a paradise, but it is also hallowed ground to people who know the history of the mid-20th Century.  One day it became the place where America was forced to enter the war and the history of Asia was forever changed.  I knew this, of course.  Because I knew it, and probably because I was being moved by the energy of what I was about to do in the Coral room, I walked up to him, shook his hand and thanked him for his service and for his sacrifice.  Guess what?  He didn’t say a word.  He simply nodded as if to wish me a fine day and send me on my way.  I took it as “You are welcome, kid.”

I wish I could have brought him into the Coral room to see the Top Seven announcement.  As  part of the announcement I introduced a slide of the Korean peninsula in the middle of the night.  It was taken by satellite and, as I wrote in my May 30 blog, it serves as a stark reminder of why the Top Seven are important for all communities in the broader historical context of community re-energization.  The southern half of the Korean peninsula is brightly lit, as the great cities of Seoul and Suwon pulse with energy and economic output; while a mere 20 miles north, the northern part of the Korean peninsula is pitch black.  Up there, you know that there is a slide toward a darkness which can engulf us.  The choice for communities is clear and it is unremitting.  It is the difference between this very real light and the very real dark.  This man, this veteran, whose name will remain forever unknown to me, had left his community long ago and, in his way and without any control, influenced an outcome of breathtaking proportion.  Today South Korea is free.  It is lit and it is moving toward better days.  Its estranged brothers and sisters north of the 38th parallel experience nothing but lousy options.  As Asia moves rapidly ahead, with communities like Taichung a representation of that energy, and places like Oulu, Finland, once a place few could find on a map completely transformed into a city of the future, the contrasts are becoming more stark.  A long night awaits those who stumble and cling to fear.  The seven who are on their way to New York to be celebrated are in full stride.

At 13.00 Hawaii time I made my announcement and ICF had seven new champions.  My favorite response was from someone who, upon hearing about the new Top Seven said simply, “Wow!  What great stories.  I didn’t realize that there was this much going on.” A few days later, I saw this video from an actual resident of Riverside, California:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPP8hGx2FXI&feature=youtu.be

We are on the right path and on the way up – up to where the light is.  The lights on Broadway are on for the Top Seven.  I have that buzzing feeling again: I cannot wait for New York in June!

One of America’s great writers, H.L. Mencken, loved the muscular inventiveness of his countrymen with the language they inherited from the English.  He extolled the American word “rubberneck” – which arose in the 1890s to describe tourists craning their necks for a better view – as “one of the best words ever coined.”  

My own current favorite example is “creep out.”  It describes feeling uneasy, fearful and a bit revolted, as though something unseen with too many legs were creeping up your arm.  Here’s an example of it in a sentence: “Is anybody else creeped out by the new Timeline feature on Facebook?”

Timeline, if you haven’t encountered it, is a setting in Facebook that arranges all of your posts, pictures, games and videos in chronological order.  Or as Facebook puts it: “The movies you quote. The songs you have on repeat. The activities you love. Now there's a new class of social apps that let you express who you are through all the things you do.”  

Information and communications technology have enormous potential to create prosperity, improve health, promote peace and reduce social stresses.  They have equally great potential to do the opposite as well.  But whatever else they do, they will change how we make meaning of our lives.  

Humans are meaning-making creatures.  We live by the stories we tell each other and ourselves.  And now here is Timeline, which transforms your stray thoughts, likes and dislikes, videos of cute cats and embarrassing photos you never should have posted into the Story of Your Life.  

It brings several questions to mind:

1.  Why would I ever want to give a bunch of almost-strangers – also known as Facebook Friends – this kind of improved access to my life’s narrative?

2.  Could this random digital debris ever be confused with the actual Story of My Life?  

3.  What if, in a few years from now, it is?

I am all for digital innovation, especially this year, when ICF’s theme is “Intelligent Communities – Platforms for Innovation.”  I am all for rubbernecking, but not when it is being done by drivers slowing down in front of me to look at a traffic accident.  I can only hope that Timeline will share the fate of cars that talk to you and technology that lets you talk on your mobile phone during airplane flights.  We are all better off when some innovations get left in the lab. 

This morning I woke up in Honolulu and I realized that this would be the last morning for a long while before I am able to get out of bed and walk to a balcony to look at the calm roll of the Pacific Ocean and feel the trade winds.  I also realized that this was the day when I would go the podium at the Mid-Pacific Conference Center to announce the new Top Seven.  The wheel started from New York, where Eindhoven was named Intelligent Community of the Year in June, is turning.  We are at the next phase now.  My first message on my Blackberry was from the office of Mayor Rob van Gijzel of Eindhoven.  He was asking for the email address for each of the new Top Seven, after they are named, so that he can congratulate them each personally.  If you are named a Top Seven at 1:00 PM (HPT) today, this may be the first email in your in-box tomorrow or the next day.

Last night at Sorabol Korean restaurant I had a private luncheon for the handful of Smart21 communities in Honolulu, as well as ICF supporters and jurists who are in attendance here at PTC.  It was an eclectic group on the surface,  but in addition to the smell of grilled kalbi (beef) and garlic on our clothes, we each had a role in enabling communities and the telecommunications industry to go forward.  Among many things, the PTC conference is a fantastic networking venue and so was the little wooden room in Sorabol (which I was told ICF’s Jury Chairman, Jag Rao, is the ancient name for Seoul.)

Among the highlights of the dinner was Allied Signal’s Hunter Newby sharing his vision for his new national fiber network across the United States, and Stratford (Canada) Mayor Dan Mathieson telling the group how his community (the smallest in population of this year’s Smart21) has used technology in agriculture to expand production and allow farmers to make a better living.  With the world expected to grow to 10 billion in population, agricultural communities can innovate themselves back to prominence.  

I was struck by Yuka Nagashima’s question to the representative from Oulu, Finland.  Yuka, who is the CEO of Hawaii’s High Tech Development Corporation, which is tasked with technology economic development here, wanted to know how the “triple helix” worked in Finland, given the nation’s performance, which includes  a brilliant turnaround in Oulu, which has weathered Nokia’s bumpy ride of late. Olli Loytynoja of Business Oulu explained how, in many ways, the community’s independence and distance from Helsinki, the national capitol, contributed to a persistent tribal response.  He elaborated further.  (I just wanted to know how in the world they survived 30 hours of flying to get here from Finland!  But as he spoke you could tell that they would go to any length to learn.)

As I have written and said in my speeches often, my father had one piece of advice for me and one only.  He said simply to make sure that I always surrounded myself with the best and the brightest people I could find and befriend.  In another blog, I wrote about his journey here in 1942 with the American Army and for a different purpose.  I said to the group at the end of the evening that he would have been proud to see how well I had taken his advice.

There was much more eating, laughing and bonding (and a few bottles of OB Beer were consumed) among those of us before we left and walked into the “Kona winds” of evening Oahu.  I am sure new friendships were made and some new business will be done as a result.  Most important, on the night before the announcement of the new Top Seven, we realized, as Mayor van Gijzel had said in June on the stage in New York, “we are all winners and shoulder-to-shoulder are building something the world has never seen.”