According to the O.E.C.D., a Paris-based governmental research organization, the U.S. now ranks 11th in the world in broadband communications behind Korea, Singapore, Japan, Canada, and Norway to name but a few. Yet broadband -- or as some call it, broadband Internet -- today is as important as waterways, railroads and interstate highways of an earlier era.
In less than a decade, the great global network of computer networks called the Internet has blossomed from an arcane tool used by academics and government researchers into a worldwide mass communications medium, now poised to become the leading carrier of all communications and financial transactions affecting life and work in the 21st Century
Cisco Systems, a leader in the telecom field has said: "Broadband infrastructure is critical" to survival in the wake of a basic shift taking pace in the structure of the world's economy. "Its deployment is a key measure of success in the information economy and is crucial to the future growth of productivity."
In fact, every city, The World Foundation for Smart Communities argues, must eagerly embrace a broadband infrastructure strategy or get cut off like a "ghost town" in an earlier era, from the mainstream of all economic development.
Not surprisingly cities the world over are struggling to reinvent themselves for the new, global, knowledge economy and thereby attract the most sought-after creative and innovative work force.
Those most successful at positioning themselves as "cities of the future" will decidedly have 24/7, broadband telecommunications in place; wired and wireless infrastructures connecting every home. school and office -- and through the world wide Web -- to every organization or institution worldwide.
They will also have put in place a strategy to build those new governance systems for our age that empower their citizens to get involved once again in the affairs of the city. Call them "collaboratories" if you will, these are the mechanisms to provide the citizen leadership the digital age requires; and above all else, cities of the future must begin promoting the process of enhancing, encouraging and fostering creativity and innovation in all its forms -- in the schools, in the workplace and throughout the community.
There is no doubt that we are in the early stages of a new era in which creativity and innovation will be the hallmarks of the most successful communities and vibrant economies. Many, like the Nomura Research Institute, argue that the stage is set for the advance of the "Creative Age," a period in which America should once again thrive and prosper because of our tolerance for dissent, respect for individual enterprise, freedom of expression and recognition that innovation is the driving force for the U.S. economy, not mass production of low-value goods and services.
Today, the demand for creativity has outpaced our nation's ability to create enough workers simply to meet our needs. Eight years ago, for example, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers asked the governor of California to "declare a state of emergency" to help Hollywood find digital artists. There were people aplenty who were computer literate, they claimed, but could not draw. In the New Economy, they argued, such talents are vital to all industries dependent on the marriage of computers and telecommunications.
At the heart of this effort to provide broadband infrastructures to every community, and to foster a renewed sense of collaboration, is the effort to keep jobs in America. This is now a matter of some urgency. For example, in the last few years we witnessed the "outsourcing" of several million high-tech jobs. Forrester Research predicted we would lose 3.3 million such jobs over the next 10-15 years. The University of California at Berkeley however said we would more likely see the loss of 10 percent of all white-collar jobs over a similar period , not to outsourcing per se but rather , that this a fact of life in a global economy.
In fact, according to a special report on "outsourcing" published recently in Business Week Magazine, more and more manufacturers in the U.S. are having both hardware and software done with companies they contract with worldwide. This, after all, is what globalization is all about, they argue. According to Business Week, "first came manufacturing, now companies are farming out R&D to cut costs and get products to market faster."
Clearly the global corporations, together with their PR agencies, found a more palatable way of talking about outsourcing, a huge and growing problem for America. The fact is most of the manufacturing jobs were lost over the last 20 years. Now with globalization in full bloom, America is beginning to see the outlines of yet another out-migration of American jobs. Unlike the earlier shift of manufacturing jobs to less developed East Asian countries, the loss of the latest round of high-tech software and service jobs will have dramatic -- some say devastating -- impacts on America's economic wealth and well-being.
Twenty years ago, it was fashionable to blame foreign competition and cheap labor markets abroad for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States, but the pain of the loss was softened by the emergence of a new services industry. Now, it is the service sector jobs that are being lost-and the high-tech, even bio med and biotech jobs that are being threatened.
Last summer, IBM, the world's largest computer maker, acknowledged that a "significant number" -- the labor unions say several thousand -- "of software and chip development and engineering jobs" were being moved to India and China. Earlier this year, industry stalwarts like Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Dell Computer announced that they, too, were either outsourcing their software development or beefing up their foreign subsidiaries in China, India, the Eastern Bloc or Russia to do the same.
While corporate CEOs, economists and politicians are telling us that these are short-term adjustments, it is clear that the pervasive worldwide spread of the Internet, digitization and the availability of white-collar skills abroad, mean huge cost savings for those global corporations. Consequently, this shift of high-tech service jobs will be a permanent feature of economic life in the 21st century. On the positive side, some economists believe that this will improve the profits and efficiency of American corporations and set the stage for the next big growth-generating breakthrough.
We will benefit by "the next big" thing only if we wake up however, and only if we take action now to begin preparing for globalization and nurturing our cities to become connected communities to meet the challenges of a new, uncertain, global creative age.
Those communities placing a premium on cultural and ethnic diversity, developing their own aggressive broadband strategy, and reinventing their educational systems for the creative age, will likely burst with innovation and entrepreneurial fervor. These are the ingredients so essential to developing and attracting the type of bright and creative people that generate new patents and inventions, innovative world-class products and services and the finance and marketing plans to support them. Nothing less will ensure America's dominant economic, social and political position in the 21st century.
We need every citizen, every businessman, every politician -- at the state, local and federal level -- to get involved in the debate and dialogue on the role of cities in the new economy if there is to be another great second American century.
We are at a crossroads in the history of our nation. Last month Dubai, one of the Arab Emirates boasting the world's largest Internet facilities, took out full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times proclaiming its success as the number one "Middle Eastern City of the Future." Closer to home, Philadelphia put in place one part of its global telecommunication strategy: a plan to offer inexpensive wireless Internet as a municipal service to the whole city -- the most ambitious scheme yet by a major U.S. city.
Quite obviously the Philadelphia plan collided with commercial interests including the local phone company. The Telco and cable interests have now joined hands to make sure no other city in Pennsylvania gets as creative. As dozens of cities and towns have either begun or announced similar ambitions, these competing interests have intensified a national campaign to quash municipal wireless initiatives like Philadelphia's.
Clearly our national communications policies are bankrupt. Since 1996 when the last major Act was written, we have seen cable television, telephone and Internet prices rise; media firms consolidate, and journalism and news outlets convert to the worst form of tabloidism. All at a time in our history when our very freedoms and culture are being threatened in the wake of globalism. Our cities -- center of commerce, crucibles of civilization and in the new economy the most likely incubators of creativity -- hamstrung by a backward-looking federal communications policy.
If ever there was a time for federal action, it is now. The Bush Administration must act swiftly and decisively. The Congress and the new chairman of the FCC must likewise follow suit to ensure that America has the infrastructure of the 21st Century, and that our cities once again are allowed to retool so that all our citizens get connected.
John M. Eger, Lionel Van Deerlin Chair of Communication and Public Policy at SDSU, is also president of the World Foundation for Smart Communities, a non-profit corporation founded to help "local communities get connected to the global information economy."
