There is no place like home | Louis Zacharilla | TEDxRio

Louis Zacharilla, cofounder of the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) in the US, brought to TEDxRio the discussion about the impact that access and broadband technologies can have on the rebirth of communities around the world.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

What I want to talk to you about
tonight, in English,

is the rise of something that many of you
may not have heard of,

which is the Intelligent Community
Movement worldwide.

How many of you have heard
of the Intelligent Community Movement?

Just raise your hands.

One gentleman who helped found it.

A couple in the back.

And somebody there who wants
to pretend they're intelligent.

(Laughter)

You look very smart, by the way.

But it is a rising tide
among cities around the world.

What I want to do tonight
is to tell you a little bit about it

and what's happening around the world.

That's my job,
to go out and to observe it.

We started the Intelligent
Community Movement.

But, more importantly,

I want to tell you how you can go home

and make your community,
your region, your city,

wherever you call home,
better, more intelligent.

Now, I didn't say smart,
because you all look very smart to me,

but we're talking
about going to next level,

we're talking about going to intelligent.

So, let's go backwards. OK.

We have a lot of fun in what we do
because we go around this world,

we meet great mayors, great counselors,
great people, great entrepreneurs,

and we see cities being transformed,
left and right, through innovation.

I'm going to take you up
about 23,000 feet.

I was in the satellite industry, I had
a business in the satellite industry,

and this is an actual photograph
of the Korean Peninsula, at night,

taken with a geostationary,
geosynchronous satellite,

So, you won't see of course the words
"South Korea" and "North Korea" there.

OK? That doesn't show up.

But check this out:
what do you notice right away?

In the south, you notice
a lot of lights, right?

Well, that's South Korea.

That's a nation that has moved
toward intelligence, right?

We all know the South Korean story.

They were once the seventh
poorest nation on Earth in 1974.

Now, they are the eighth richest,
and it wasn't an accident.

They decided to take some
of the principles of technology,

intelligence, education,
all of the things that we know about

and activate their cities.

So, if you go to Seul,
if you go to the Danwon-gu district,

if you go to Seowon,

you will see places
very, very robust thriving.

They are themselves,

and they are exporting themselves
culturally around the world,

everything from, obviously, techonology

because of too many of the phones
you have on your hand,

but also culturally.

K-pop? Anybody listened to K-pop?

It's terrific!

(Laughter)

You know, I'm far too old,
but I listen to it all the time!

Why?

Because it's great cultural export
that they put on a new railroad

and bring out to the world.
It's a $ 6 billion industry.

OK. Go to the north.
Go north of the 38th parallel.

What do you see?

Right: darkness.

You see a place plunged into darkness
and moving into an even darker space.

That's a nation that has made a decision
to go the wrong way.

People always ask me,
"What's that little light there?"

And I always say, "It's a South Korean
who lost his GPS system."

(Laughter)

But the deal is this: it's a perfect
analogy for a couple of things.

The first one is the stakes are very high
for the places you live today,

whether it's Rio, whether it's
New York where I come from,

whether it's a small community
in Canada like Stratford,

some of the intelligent cities,

because we have a choice:

we are going to move toward light
with our communities,

or we're going to get plunged
into the darkness.

And I'll tell you why
the stakes are very high.

Because national governments
aren't working.

They are increasingly dysfunctional.

You don't need to go too far away
from Brazil to figure that out,

but you don't need to go too far away
from Washington to figure it out either.

And the reason is not that these places
are run by bad people;

it's that the problems
have become too complex.

Now, Henry Kissinger himself,
in 2011, said,

"The nation-state, as it was designed
in Europe about 160 years ago,

is increasingly dysfunctional."

The problems are too complex

to be managed and thought through
by central governments;

far, far removed from the places
that people call home.

I noticed this -

Months after Kissinger made his speech
in New York, which I attended, in 2011,

I flew, I was invited to fly,
to Egypt, to Cairo,

to give a speech to a group of young CEOs
in a place called Samert Village Cairo.

I happened to arrive there on the night
that Tahrir Square blew up,

and my hotel was
looking over Tahrir Square.

It was a very, very revealing night for me

in terms of the Intelligent
Community Movement

because what I saw

were people who were asking
their country to work for them

and it was not.

They were asking their city
to work for them, and it was not.

And this was something that was playing
over, and over, and over around the world.

Egypt was losing its best and brightest.

There was brain drain,
instead of brain gain,

which we talk about
in our book, "Brain Gain."

What was really interesting was I started
to hang out with a couple of young people

who worked at the hotels where I was
before I actually got evacuated,

and every night they would go
into that square

and they would try to reclaim their city.

And they said, "If the government
doesn't work for us,

if this community doesn't work for us,
we will develop our own community."

And what they did - this is a picture,
actually, that was taken -

is they spray-painted this word.
Isn't it interesting?

Of all the slongs they could have chosen,

they chose something that would
give them a sense of community, right?

Facebook, connectivity, community,

a sense of being together.

So, the world has been turned
upside down by this,

and again, what we are seeing
are very, very significant problems

that national governements can't handle.

But we're going to have 70%
of the world's population

living in cities by 2050.

We at the Intelligent Community Forum
looked at that and said,

"Are you kidding me?"

We can't manage the flow
that's in our cities now.

Why are we depopulation some
of the most beautiful places on Earth,

some of the places
where people prefer to live?

People don't want to be
economic refugees.

If they go to another place to live,

probably the best way is
because they want to go for adventure,

not for economic opportunity,
because that's a zero-sum game.

When my grandfather came over from Italy,
at the turn of the last century,

he didn't come over
because he didn't like Italy.

He came over because there was
nothing there for him.

They were plunging into darkness.

So, we looked at this issue,
and we looked at it really hard.

That's one of the reasons we started
the Intelligent Community Movement.

I grew up in a community that fell apart,

but we discovered something; we brought
some really smart people together.

My father always said,

"If you want to learn anything,
don't hang around with stupid people.

Hang around with smart ones."

My mother said, "That's good.
He'll have a lot of friends." (Laughter)

We started to bring
these people together,

and we found out something.

I'm going to declare this now.

I guess nationwide
we're being broadcast here.

It's a secret: the middle
of nowhere is no more.

The middle of nowhere is no more.

OK? That will be
in the headlines tomorow.

(Laughter)

Why?

Because, for the first time
in human history,

so far as we can tell,

two conditions exist
that have never ever existed before

in the history of our species.

What are they?

The first one is a human being
can live anywhere he or she wants.

The second one is that they can be
connected to a global economy.

Those two conditions
have never existed before.

We've asked anthropologists, historians;
we've caucused people.

That's what we do at the
Intelligent Community Forum.

We bring very, very smart people together
to think about this stuff.

They never existed before.

I looked at that from the perspective
of the satellite industry where I was from

where I knew that three
satellites in orbit

could connect the entire Earth
with a broadband signal.

And I said, "We've got ourselves
a new railroad,"

because the only thing you need
to link those two things,

where a person lives and where he
or she connects to the global economy,

is that connecting point.

Now, that connecting point
is usually broadband,

it's usually the internet,
it's usually some form of connectivity.

That's the new railroad.

Same proposition
as the old railroad, right?

The old railroad was:
if it ran past your town, you know -

whether you lived in Piraí
or whether you lived in Canada -

if it ran through yout town -

People are laughing at Piraí!
What happened?

(Laughter)

Don't they have a railroad?

(Laughter)

But you could trade with the next town,
if you coud put your cargo on it,

and that cargo could be lumber,
it could be oil,

whatever the commodities,
that drove last, old economy.

The new railroad is quite different,
but it has the same principles.

If you are on that line,
if you are connected to it,

you can trade.

You can put your ideas, your apps,
all those things on it,

and not only trade with the next
geophysical village or country,

but you can trade worldwide.

You can trade with Vietnam,
you can trade with Canada,

you can trade with China.

That's a great proposition
and the most important part of it

is you can stay home and do it!
You don't have to leave!

Your mother and father want you
to stay home. Well, maybe they don't.

(Laughter)

But if you want to stay home, start your
business and be the next great company,

why not?

That's our proposition
and that's what we're seeing.

Here are some examples
of what's happening today.

Thity-five percent of the top 100
fastest-growing companies

are now located outside
of major metro areas.

So, we've launched
something that is called

the fire of the Intelligent
Community Movement.

We've brought 135 cities together

and we've got them following
a basic set of six principles,

and they are creating
a new DNA for cities,

they're completely ignoring federal
governments for the most part

and saying, "We're going to seize
our own destiny,

we're going to seize the means
of our own economy

and we are going to build from who we are,
from culturally who we are.

And guess what?

We're not going to compete for business
with the people next to us in the region.

We're going to work together,
we are going to stop competing with others

and we're going to start
competing with ourselves,

because that's how we see
the new world working."

In places that do it,
like Eindhoven, in Holland,

miracles are happening.

They created something
called the triple helix -

It's a new DNA, literally -

where they've got the local government,

they've got the private sector
and they've got the academic sector,

which is very, very important,
the intellectual class,

because the new factory floor
is going to be the university.

That's where the knowledge
workers are being made.

They're all now working together
to create new types of ecosystems,

where new companies flourish
and continue to grow,

and where people feel
very, very comfortable

doing something
that's really, really important,

which is removing everything
they knew, not being attached,

and moving toward a new economy
to seize their destiny.

They're not transforming themselves
into the new Silicon Valley.

I want to make that real clear.

They're doing it by being themselves,
like the Koreans, like the Dutch.

They're also doing something
that I really think is important.

They're using six basic principles

to basically tranform themselves.

Only one of those principles
is technology.

So, when a community wants
to become an intelligent community,

it does six things well - and again,
you can take your notebook out

because you'll go
back home and do this;

I'll give you some homework here.

They look at their
broadband infrastructure,

"Do we have an adequate railroad?",
and at their knowledge workforce.

We've been talking a lot tonight
about education -

they understand something
about the new knowledge workforce.

They understand that the primary
objective of education today

is to unlearn things,

to be creative, to be more
like Picasso, right?

They understand that
about the knowledge economy.

Third thing is they look for innovation.

They look for it in the private sector

where we have, pretty well, companies
like mine start up all the time in the US,

but they also look for it
in the local government.

Is local government thinking creatively
about its interaction with citizens?

Are they looking ahead with us?

Fourth thing is, we call it,
digital democracy.

Are we bringing everybody along?

If knowledge is the endless
natural resource

that doesn't pollute the water or the air,

and we know it's going to be
the commodity for the new economy,

don't we want everybody
along on this ride?

The least among us?

You know, that's not just a moral mandate,
that's good economic sense,

and that's what these communities do now.

The fifth thing is advocacy.

People like you are doing
exactly what you should do

when governments
at the national level fail:

you're falling back on your own,
your becoming tribal.

You can become tribal
in a good way and in a bad way,

and I used that word in a good way here.

Tribes advocacte,
they tell their own stories,

they create new mythologies
for themsleves,

or they reinforce their direction,
and that's what these cities are doing.

They're telling their story
to themselves in a new way.

They say, "This is where we're going.
We're hopeful now.

We're going to go toward the light.
We're not going to go toward the dark."

Sixth thing they do
is they become sustainable.

That's a no-brainer.

If I'm going to locate in Brazil,
if I'm going to move my company,

I'm going to come to a place
that is sustainable economically,

and a place that has good, clean air,
good quality of life,

but also intellectually sustainable.

Is it a place that,
over the next three generations,

will produce a good, robust economy?

That's what these cities are doing:

they're taking these
six principles of the ICM,

and they're going forward,

and we're got 145 of them now
that are performing at very high levels.

The others learn from them.

We bring them together,
six, seven at a time,

and they start sorting
through the more complex problems

that the national governments
can't sort through,

and it's beginning to transform
the national governments

in places like Taiwan, for example,

where the president,
who used to be a mayor, kind of gets it.

OK.

I told you that smart is OK,
you're all very smart, we're all smart,

but becoming an intelligent
community is the key.

Technology is not really the thing.

People get all jazzed up about technology,

but this is about unleashing
human potential, not technology.

I don't need to know why the lights work.

I just need to know what happens
when those lights are on,

what's the exciting stuff we can do
when the lights are on, right?

That's what we want.

Look, there are three ways
we can get into the 21st century, OK?

You can go in there kicking and screaming,
like a child, resisting,

or we can wait for your factories to leave
or your economy to collapse,

and then you can say, "Well,
I guess we've got to make a change!"

Well, Buddha told us 2,500 years ago,
in the second nobel truth,

that the reason we suffer
is because we're attached, we cling.

You can't cling to the past.

You can't go into the 21st century
kicking and screaming.

You've got to go in openly.

The second way is that you can go in
byway of the 12th century.

Just take a map of the Middle East
and you'll see how that's working, right?

If you want to go to the 21st century,
I don't think you go byway of the 12th,

but the third way is you become
an intelligent community.

You begin to figure out ways
to activate your intelligence,

you look at what others are doing,

who have stopped competing with others
and started competing with themselves,

and you go for a ride.

This is not going to happen overnight.
I won't solve this problem in 18 minutes.

I've been working on for 20 years.

But you're going to go home
and, as an intenet generational project,

you're going to sort it out

so that your kids never have to leave
if they don't want to.

That's all that this movement is about.

My granfather used to say,
(Italian) "There is no place like home."

There's no place like home.

If you remember that one simple phrase -

you don't even have to remember
that Louis Zacharilla's grandfather said,

but, if you remember it,
you will always be motivated

because, at the end of the day,

you'll only fight
for your country so long,

your country is just an abstract thing,

but you will fight
for your home, and your family,

and the place where you are
culturally sustained, endlessly.

You will never stop because it is
the place that you call home.

So, I wish you all the luck in the world
going back out into your homes

in activating them.

We have had a revolution.

We obviously see it everywhere we go.
It's a technology revolution.

You've had enough revolutions
in South America.

We've had enough in the rest of the world.

What we want to activate
is the new Renaissance.

That's where art, technology,
money, culture flourish,

and those places were all done in cities.

The old Renaissance was city-driven.
The new Renaissance will be, too.

So, good luck.

I hope you understood my English.

(Laughter)

(Portuguese) Thank you,
and God bless you all. Good night!

(Applause)