Making meaningful connections in a high-tech world

Communities are the heart of innovation in the digital age. Let’s make sure we preserve the human connection required to help those communities flourish.

Nov 04, 2024

*Wisdom Shared | Futures Shaped,* a collaboration with ChatGPT.

With this edition, I rename this newsletter to reflect my new project: exploring the future of communities in the digital age and discovering the innovations that may help them flourish. The new title is Mark Dancer on Innovating Communities. Each edition builds on the last, and all previous issues are available in my archives. Dig in.

I aim to make art of my nonfiction, refining my prose with the same care I find in the books, films, and art I consume. Currently, I'm reading Salman Rushdie's Knife and What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci. As I've written, I was deeply moved by films and conversations at the Rocky Mountain Women's Film Festival. The authors and filmmakers who inspire me most offer poignant and poetic work, giving voice to their ideas and experiences, rewilding them to wander, stir, shock, disrupt, and endure. As always, my work is a journey, and I welcome your feedback.

Building community

Ideas are stardust—tiny things, yet countless, ephemeral, and born of the many minds of our human hive; they are innovation's cosmic catalysts, granting grace to live with meaning and purpose. In reflecting on ideas, I find myself drawn to the insight of Sydney Berry, a visionary leader and professional beauty and wellness activist:

Technology and the digital world of connection prevent humanity from thriving through the guidance and joy found in community. Knowing that career purpose is supported within a community where everyone thrives together is essential. We have become so entranced by AI and other digital technologies that we have forgotten the importance of connecting with one another as humans, which is the greatest opportunity we have to flourish.

Digital technologies connect us even as they disconnect us. We are joined via virtual pathways formed by data and artificial intelligence, stimulated by platform design—but never by human empathy. Experiences reach us mostly as individuals, distracting us from tactile human gatherings—the ones we can sense, feel, smell, and touch—and sometimes blocking them altogether. In this way, communities are diminished in the digital age and hastened in their decline by digitalism.

But what is digitalism? First, think of it like scientism. Science is the uncompromising, never-ceasing search for truth. We can embrace the scientific method to benefit humanity, but we must not worship it. That's scientism—unquestioned science, placed on a pedestal as the one true way to render truth about the world and what is real. Science enlightens. Scientism blinds.

Like scientism, digitalism elevates a tool too far. Scientism reduces truth to empirical facts; digitalism reduces human experience to data points. Scientism distorts our understanding of reality, while digitalism narrows our experience of each other. Just as we resist the worship of science, we must resist the unbridled march of digital technologies, unleashed by digitalism, eroding human connection and communities in the relentless pursuit of efficiency, convenience, and endorphins.

The fight against digitalism is only just beginning, and ideas are essential for bringing us back together and steering us toward more human-centered, digitally empowered innovations. Ideas are not answers; they are more like questions, and the best may become sparks—the first steps that inspire change. Here are three offered as the beginnings of community innovations:

Measure connection time. Screen time is a measure of isolation created by digital devices like our smartphones. What if communities, large and small, could measure—and publish—the depth, breadth, and quality of human interactions at events such as festivals, art walks, farmers' markets, candidate debates, and more? After all, what gets measured gets accomplished.
Collaborative value creation. Listening to Indra Nooyi, former Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, I learned that embracing a "duty to care for society" is a way to build—or rebuild—a great company. What if company and community leaders collaborated not to design and sell products but to imagine and cultivate behaviors that foster trust, build brands, generate revenue, promote wellness, and create mutual wealth—not just shareholder value? Profits are essential, but greatness demands more.
Deliberative community testing. Around the globe, nations and communities use deliberative polling—a digitally enabled tool for organizing citizen discussions, informed by expert knowledge, in small groups, and at scale—to foster mutual understanding, overcome polarization, and build consensus around what works. Could this tool be used to design products not for market segments but for local communities—and identify new ways to monetize investments that benefit everyone? Listen here for James Fishkin's catalyzing ideas on Stanford's Future of Everything podcast. I can see it, can you?

Communities are the heart of innovation in the digital age. By measuring connection time, practicing collaborative value creation, and engaging in deliberative community testing, we can steer progress toward solutions prioritizing human connection, shared purpose, and collective well-being. We can create vibrant, thriving communities together—one idea at a time.

About the artwork

With the help of ChatGPT, I explored the meaning of Chautauqua as a place, a tradition, and a tragedy. Founded over a century ago, the Chautauqua Institution is a center for intellectual engagement, artistic expression, and dialogue—themes that resonate with the community innovations explored in this edition. However, on August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was attacked and nearly killed while speaking at Chautauqua about artistic freedom and the persecution of writers. Rushdie survived, and in the spirit of his resilience, he has since written about the attack and what it means for him—and for all of us.

The artwork in this edition reflects the spirit of a modern-day Chautauqua: a gathering for meaningful dialogue at the community level, leveraging digital tools, proximity, and democracy to pursue wellness and shared prosperity. It represents a collaboration among workers, owners, leaders, experts, activists, and citizens. The artwork—and the research behind it—is created in collaboration with ChatGPT.

A way forward

Maybe everything old is new again, and a way to build thriving communities in the digital age is to spark a new Chautauqua movement. Founded by Lewis Miller, an inventor, and John Heyl Vincent, a Methodist minister, the original Chautauqua began as a summer retreat to train Sunday school teachers. It soon expanded to include lectures on art, politics, science, literature, and religion. Over time, it grew into traveling circuits of cultural education, held under tents or in town halls, where national and local speakers, artists, and scholars engaged directly with citizens. President Theodore Roosevelt called it "the most American thing in America" because it encouraged active citizenship and public dialogue—empowering people to think critically, debate ideas, and connect through shared learning. In a time when digital technologies connect us but also isolate us, a modern-day Chautauqua could rekindle community spirit through meaningful, in-person conversations.

Innovating Communities with Mark Dancer

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