Recommendation 6: Develop Participatory Citizens

. Government agencies and elected officials
can create the background conditions that allow everyday citizens to take part in community
affairs. Readily accessible childcare, mandatory civics courses in public schools, and government
internship programs make civic participation easier and more habit-forming. Consistent with our
“Recycling” principle, non-political community service, required by more and more schools, has
been shown to create greater political awareness, and perhaps even to spur political participation
in many young people. We believe it is time for political leaders to stop fearing the broadening of
political participation and start encouraging it.
Recommendation 7: Enact a  “Cyber Morrill Act” to create a market for community-friendly
cyber-innovations. Just as government played an important role in encouraging public innovation
during the Industrial Revolution, so too in today’s Information Revolution public policy needs to
supplement private commercial demand for technological innovation. In 1862 and 1890 Congress
passed the Morrill Acts, giving the states millions of acres of federal frontier land and other
federal grants, the proceeds of which were used to create institutions of higher education. Most
state agricultural and engineering schools were established under the Morrill Acts. These so-
called  “land grant colleges” represented one of the most productive investments in American
economic history, for they radically expanded both educational opportunities and locally relevant
applied industrial and agricultural research and development. We propose a modern-day “Cyber
Morrill Act” under which the federal government would auction off the analog broadcast
spectrum (which commercial television stations are abandoning for the digital spectrum) and use
the proceeds to foster community-friendly cyber-innovations.
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  Rather than direct government
subsidies for R & D, we propose that these funds be distributed to local governments and civic
associations for the purchase of innovative information technology. In effect, these funds would
create a market for community-friendly cyber-innovations, thus providing a market-based
incentive to lure innovative researchers and information technology firms into this area.
Recommendation 8: Learn from Our Mistakes.  In keeping with the  “Hippocratic” and  “Social
Capital Impact” principles, we urge government agencies, elected officials, non-profit groups, and
other public institutions to study their past activities and programs to assess how they helped or
hurt community social capital. In addition, we urge government and non-profit leaders to put
pending decisions under the social-capital lens. Such analyses should attempt to understand the
decisions and processes that drive the creation and destruction of social capital.