Round Rock is a popular suburb north of Austin. It’s home to Dell Computers and a minor league baseball franchise that develops star MLB players like Yordan Alvarez. Highly recommend its civic program called Round Rock UniverCity which I completed last year.
This program unveils the playbook behind a fast-growing, family-friendly city in Texas. Civics programs that are in real life (IRL) make their communities better. Such a program should also be taught in the local schools.
How Civics can Help Defuse AI
Social media and the internet keep people glued to their devices —- which benefits a handful of companies and a few million people to the detriment of billions. The more Americans can get out of their shells, namely their homes, the less they help train AI with their internet usage. It’s not worth spending so much time online to train AI models that eventually will make people obsolete from their jobs and avoid their houses of worship & other third places. Civic participation (voting, volunteering, etc.) is declining in many metros.
AI and their creators are picking up patterns and soon devices will control users. Your phone will become your boss. And it may come in the form of a robot.
The architects of AI have designed the chatter-sphere online (X, Reddit, YouTube, etc) in order to divide and distract. AI doesn’t bring real people together. Ultimately, it doesn’t need you consuming content like this. It’s ok to go offline more and starve AI of what it wants: your info. There’s also a massive upside with AI in government. That’s a topic for a different day.
Solving Real World Problems (IRL)
I once lived in Seattle — the cultural opposite of Round Rock. What I observed is that Seattle like Round Rock invests in civic programs to connect communities. These government programs exist across the country and are worthy of your time.
People in Round Rock and Seattle really do care about their communities given the challenges of maintaining services, addressing climate change, and curbing poverty. Leaders and volunteers have stepped up in the government and nonprofit sectors to find solutions. A Seattle-based nonprofit hosts a ‘Civic Saturday’ program (see below) that brings the community together much like Round Rock’s UniverCity.
Stopping the Blame Game
We live in a time where government is getting blamed for stopping American prosperity and freedom. The playbook for making government relevant again is teaching civics. There’s a movement towards gathering and working in third spaces. Spreading the gospel of civic virtues should be every public servant’s goal: increasing awareness of how government works to improve quality of life and fix problems before they get out of hand. People need to watch their tax dollars at work.
Without government, safety nets disappear. There won’t be police or first responders to protect you. Public schools will disappear. Communities won’t exist. America becomes the war zone portrayed by the movie Civil War. A divided America is what the world wants. China is doubling down on its infrastructure as America cuts back.
America needs to invest wisely in civics education in order to make this country great again.
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