NEAL PEIRCE. Just imagine the cutting-edge knowledge and skills encompassed in a modern citistate — especially one, like Boston, that specializes in the intellectual pursuits, scientific discovery and innovation.
Fittingly enough, the Boston Globe has just put on an Ideas Boston 2004 conference, two days of some of the region’s brightest and most adventuresome minds, in 20-minute bursts of information, insight, prediction, mixed celebration of their unfolding fields and warnings of the new century perils they discern. A pair of bloggers kept the region informed of each unfolding presentation.
The mix of specialties was mind-boggling — among them robotocist, nanotechnologist, trauma surgeon, architect, theater director, biomedical engineer, composer, professor of religion, biologist, sculptor, oceanographer. And an economist — our friend Barry Bluestone of Northeastern University. Barry focused on mega-trends of American prosperity since World War II and the perils to equity and long-term prosperity when we rely (as we began to do in the ‘90s) on an unfettered Wall Street mode instead of mixing private wealth with major funding for basic research, infrastructure and education.
Many of the experts, from stem cell researchers to inventors, stressed the incredible value of freedom of exploration. Juan Enrique, author of an intriguing book How The Future Catches You, noted that great science was being done in the Moslem world 1,000 years ago, even in a dark Middle Ages when Europe’s religious heretics risked being burned at the stake for troubling new ideas. Today, clearly, the tables are turned. It matters immensely when fundamentalists seize power.
On the lighter side, I loved the fanciful mechanical sculptures of Arthur Ganson, delicate and ingenious machines in complex motion, exalting in pure innovation and joyfulness. Too little of that in today’s world.
Does a virtual Niagara of innovation, creation, vision, add up to something? In pure economic terms, without a doubt — from venture capital to philanthropic dollars, a region with a cornucopia of inventive minds has a true advantage.
But do the ideas function just in their own silos? Do they mix? Do they have a cumulative, kinetic force? Many of the thinkers expressed willingness to experiment broadly, to cross boundaries into other disciplines as they develop their careers and thinking. Composer Osvaldo Goligov spoke, for example, of the boundaries he crosses in his music, playing a moving piece that combined Muslim, Jewish, and Christian influences. Stem cell pioneer Douglas Melton talked of the potentials and perils of the chimera — creatures mixed from distinctly different genetic pools.
Yet as these thinkers talked of “boundary crossers” I had to remember the booklet of that very name that Curt Johnson and I wrote in a project with John Gardner and John Parr a few years ago. We discovered that collaboration is the critical civic DNA for the 21st century. Boston, civically, seems almost as weak at the collaborative arts as it is clearly strong in science, art, education and finance. That the theme we developed we developed in our recent report, Boston Unbound.
It remains to be seen whether Boston can make the connection between its richness in ideas and shortcomings in collaborative action.
– Neal Peirce