The Seven Deadly Digital Sins

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It was way back in 590 AD that Pope Gregory the First made the list of human frailties we know today as the Seven Deadly Sins.  These are not the big sins covered by the Talmud's Ten Commandments: thou shalt not this and thou shalt not that.   They are psychological excesses: extravagance, greed, wrath, pride and so on.  My own personal favorite is envy.  It's so universal - where would a consumer culture be without it? - so socially acceptable and so corrosive. If a day goes by when I haven't envied somebody for something, well, I'm just not living. 

We now have evidence that the Seven Deadly Sins are going to follow us into the digital future.  A recent study by Brandchoices.co.uk found that 6 out of 10 Brits admit they would be jealous if they found out that their neighbors had a faster broadband connection than they did. I get it.  At home, I'm suffering with a cable modem delivering maybe 4 Mbps downstream on a good day. If you have a 20 Meg fiber connection, I'm going to curse the ground you walk on. 

But really, envy isn't as much fun as it looks.  It feels bad, for one thing.  It also blinds us to the very real gifts that life has put into our hands.  And it keeps us from taking action to make things better.  It's so much more comfortable to just sit and stew in envy than to do something new and different.   This has been driven home to me by recent work with the Intelligent Communities we have honored through our award program.  I have written a series of what we call Report Cards.  Intelligent Communities ask for them to get feedback on how they scored in our award program's analysis, which gets increasingly rigorous as they advance from Smart21 to Top Seven to Intelligent Community of the Year.  Naturally, we don't reveal how other communities scored - but we do show them where their strengths and weaknesses are, so that they know where to focus in their nomination the following year.  And as I always remind people, it's not really about the nomination or the award.  It's about broadband and knowledge work, digital inclusion and innovation and advocacy in your community.  Knowing your real strengths and weaknesses is just the first step toward making the economic and social progress your citizens deserve. 

I am just wrapping up a Report Card for Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.  And here's the point: Moncton made the Top Seven last year and really wanted to be our 2009 Intelligent Community of the Year.  The honor went to Stockholm instead.  Moncton's first response was to ask for a Report Card to help them understand why.  When they were named to our Smart21 Communities of 2010, they asked for another Report Card to understand the new competitive environment.  Now, I was not given a magic crystal that lets me see into the hearts of men and women.  For all I know, they may be suffering from all of the Seven Deadly Sins up there in Atlantic Canada.  But they are taking action.  They are seizing their opportunities with both hands, looking their strengths and weaknesses straight in the eye, and deciding what to do about them.  That's smart.  That's the spirit we see in all of the communities we honor in our awards.  And it may just be the single most important competitive advantage they have.