Smart World Dumb World

How nations balance stability and change determines their destiny. The science of networking tells us that the more people are tied to social networking, the greater the opportunity to connect with human affairs, political participation, and cultural diversity in values and life style. Simply put, the more knowledge flows freely, the more likely ideas change minds. The world is full of these hidden connections among social relations, power sharing, wealth creation and cultural awareness. Knowledge is the prime mover of smart nations without which growth is impossible; and without which smart people cannot bring change. As nations reshape themselves into smart societies, change accelerates. 


Smart World  explores the inner workings of knowledge - one of those invisible forces that rule the world along with wealth, power, and status - by altering thinking that reshapes the outside world. To become smarter, the world must develop a strategy where the means (growth) to the end (development) benefits the seven billion people on earth in ways that economies produce more with less and scale it fairly. It turns out knowledge has properties that allow growth and development to create and diffuse ideas through increasing returns to nations.



The book suggests that national development is founded on a rich wealth of knowledge that combines with almost anything to recreate reality. Specifically, deep thinking leads not only to complex knowledge, but also increases the number of groups profiting from ideas, which allows public knowledge to improve collective wisdom, and private knowledge to invent.  Once a threshold of awareness is attained, knowledge creates economies of scale by combining higher standards of public integrity and proprietary commerce into a partnership with the common good. A strong civil society built on this cooperation forms a powerful national ethos that offers each generation the opportunity to prosper. Under these conditions, smart world leads to a sustainable future where knowledge deepens meaning for all, and where any nation can achieve success.