"Designing 21st Century Ithaca"

David Lytel

Office of Science and Technology Policy
The White House

Remarks as prepared for delivery for the Networking Tompkins County conference,
Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, 16 March 1996.

I want to start out by thanking you for inviting me, especially to organizers Bill Kaupe and Steve Worona. I have participated in a number of events like this in the three years I have been a part of the Clinton Administration, but this is the first time I ever touched upon what is now known in Washington as the "Mike Espy Problem." Espy, as you'll remember, was the Secretary of Agriculture who was forced to resign for a number of reasons, including too many trips back home paid for at taxpayer expense. So, of course, when faced with a determination by the ethics referee that the play you've called is out of bounds there is nothing you can do but capitulate. OK, fine, I won't consider it official travel. Let's call it a trip home. Then I discovered, to my horror, that the conference press release called me a "former" Ithacan. I was a man without a home. It turns out that getting the "former" removed from the proud title Ithacan is a simple but potentially expensive outpatient procedure that can be performed by any licensed realtor, so we went to see one yesterday and are trying to get that taken care of. It is tough to know where to look but I had an epiphany yesterday afternoon when we were out looking--we want Ithaca schools but the Trumansburg Telephone Company. This narrows down the search considerably, basically to the north side of Perry City Road.

The subject that I get to talk to you about today is one of my most enduring fantasies, one that goes back to the day I first visited Ithaca as a high school student more than twenty years ago. It is one that I've worked and re-worked in a series of articles in the Ithaca Times in the early 80s, in a master's thesis here at Ithaca College in the mid-80s, in a doctoral dissertation for Cornell that was completed in the early 90s, and in a novel that will probably never be finished. During that time I have seen it from the perspective of a community activist, and then from the perspective of a Common Council member. And I have brought you a door prize you may do what you want with. In 1987, I think, at a celebration of the Harmonic Convergence I was introduced to a guy who worked for Corning. That turned into this proposal for an integrated broadband communications system for Ithaca that was written by Touche Ross Associates. It sets out some of what could be done and how we might go about it. It still makes interesting reading, but you can safely ignore the July 1988 response deadline.

At its simplest the idea this document contains and the one that has animated my writing and research for years is just this: That both history and technology provide Ithaca and Tompkins County with a rare, almost unmatched combination of resources and attributes for it to be the first city of the 21st century. Some of these attributes are measurable, like the importance of research and education to the local economy, the percentage of households with computers, or the extremely high level of cable connectivity due to the hills and the lack of over-the-air broadcast reception.

But while they create a substrate, they are not primarily what Ithaca has that make it ideally suited for work on the frontier of technology and democracy. Ithaca and Tompkins County are extremely well politicked and well governed. By politicked I mean we have a vibrant, thriving political life in which a great part of the population feels involved. There are ample means for citizens to express themselves and they retain that almost lost sense that they could by their actions change something worth changing.

By well governed I don't just mean that the local governments provide competent services at an acceptable tax rate. I mean that we are lovingly governed by members of our community who have the motivation, the intelligence, the creativity, and the support of their fellow citizens to address the problems we face together. And just as this is true today it is also true historically. I cannot walk across DeWitt Park without thinking of the legacy we have been bequeathed by generations of local politicians long gone. OK, I know, this is probably a strange way to enjoy DeWitt Park, but that is what I think when I go there.

Past generations have done a good job with everything from the layout of the community to the design of our political institutions. But the difference between making history happen and having history happen to you is knowing where you are in time and space, and taking action to help give birth to a future you see before you struggling to be revealed.

That is what I think is before you--before us--right now. We can be midwives to the birth of a new democracy. We are living at a moment in which democracy is triumphant worldwide. That is fine as far as it goes, but it is the triumph of 18th century democracy. The political geography of our landscape was built around the time it would take a person on horseback to travel in a day. Needless to say, these assumptions about transportation and communications are hopelessly obsolete. But the core principles of our democracy--freedom in a just society--are there to be recaptured by a new set of decision-making rules that are built not on 18th century speech and travel but on how we do this and will do it in the 21st century.

Public decision-making may be thought of as structured communication--a set of procedures that, if followed, lead to an authoritative decision being made about the allocation of values or resources. So dream with me for a moment.

First, let's dismiss the problem of the equitable distribution of the next generation of communications technology. The reason I have been excited by cable in the past is because that set-top box they place in peoples homes is rapidly becoming a computer. In some places--even some run by Time Warner--it already is a more powerful computer than today's personal computer. The cable company could replace today's set-top box with tomorrow's and in a short time Ithaca would be the most technologically advanced community in the world. Time Warner already does distribute computers that are more powerful than your PCs to test subscribers in Orlando. They give them an SGI Indy so they can buy more TV shows. However, they do not give the subscribers a keyboard for the Indy or anything to do with it that uses its communications capabilities.

But it is very important that we don't stop with the image of a single person at home in front of their TV or computer. If this is what we are trying to accomplish we could do that, but it would either have not much to do with democracy and community- building or would actually undercut them. You have to imagine as well a network of local access centers, places where people can go to get help, to use a printer or scanner, or to help other people. Picture GIAC, Southside, the library, and each of the schools as places people can go for access. This is not only very possible but if you read the franchise Time Warner signed you would have thought this would be done by now.

So Ithaca could be a technology pioneer by taking this step. However, being a technology pioneer is not much of a challenge. Being a pioneer in the distribution and application of computer-based media--in what is now being called social computing-- this is the challenge. We have to set the clear--and profoundly political goal--of bringing everyone along. Most citizens do not recognize better access to computers and networks as a need. What they want is more free time, fewer administrative hassles, lower cost housing and utilities, better health care and education for themselves and their children, and to live in a more loving community. And since my time is limited let me just focus on the last of these, on how 21st century Ithacans--the Ithaca of five years from now--could make a collective decision. You can imagine any number of details on how this could work, but here is my rough draft of the software for a viable electronic democracy.

First, let the Common Council set the public agenda. This gives them something important to do and keeps them involved, which prevents them from doing something bad. They could use online or telephone surveys or sunspots or whatever means they wished to set out the top five things to be decided in a year.

Next, all of the local associations and opinion leaders get to express themselves. They can do this online, of course, but also through radio, television, newspapers, the mail, word-of-mouth, whatever. What matters is that we get the activists--the people who really care about this--to address themselves not to Common Council but to their fellow citizens.

People can vote. What would a democracy be without voting? If their minds are already made up they can vote as soon as voting is allowed. If they require more information they can gather it from those for or against the measure, through whatever medium they are most comfortable with. Or they can turn to "objective" analysts to help them decide. Actually casting a vote can either be done online or at one of the access centers, and security can be greater than maintained by today's Board of Elections with very little effort.

Once a quorum has voted--some minimum percentage like a majority--then six weeks (or whatever) remain for everyone who has not voted to cast a ballot. Vote or don't vote but once a majority has voted then we've passed the threshold of a real decision. My guess is that a whole lot of people will not start paying attention until there is a deadline.

The results, of course, are known the instant that voting stops. They could be merely advisory at first, but woe be to the politician who goes against such a carefully constructed and well-expressed majority opinion. It wouldn't even need to be formally legal for it to carry such legitimacy that it would be implmented.

This, I believe, is how Ithacans could be making decisions in a few years. If we do this, we will be showing the world something extremely important--where democracy is going.

Remember, there is no ineluctable force that pulls the community-oriented applications of new media into being. As long as people are making individual purchasing decisions on buying computers, and modems, and software, and network connections then this community and democracy stuff just grows organically, without organization. My fear is that without design it will produce a "community" that is no more than a cacophy of voices, all screaming "me, me, ME!" This is what many of today's commercial online services and the Internet often are like. That is fine for a market, for people interacting with one another as buyers and sellers. But consumers do not build communities. Citizens do. We have more in common than what we buy. We share a city, a county, and a community.

I am a licensed doctor of governments, and that is what I think is wrong with ours and how it should be corrected. I know my license isn't recognized everywhere, but it ought to at least be recognized here in Ithaca where I got it. I think we can do something that is very new and very exciting. Or, as it says most eloquently in words etched into the sidewalk on the corner of Stewart Avenue and Buffalo Street--"deeds can't dream what dreams can do." Your dreams can rekindle a flame that has almost gone out, that we hold our own future in our own hands. We can show the world what democracy can become in the 21st century.

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