Press Published in the Press SV Magazine

Mike Cassidy's SV Dispatches
(Sunday Magazine of the San Jose Mercury News)

by Mike Cassidy

published in Mercury News, San Jose, CA
16 April 2000

THE GREAT THING about Silicon Valley is that the ideas never stop.

The next this. The next that. A better way to do something you never knew you had to do.

Which leads to the bad thing about Silicon Valley: The ideas never stop.

So many of them hurt my head. Some are so small I can barely imagine them. Chips designed on the molecular level. Tiny robots that will heal me from the inside. Computers worn as eyeglasses.

Others are so huge, I don't know where to start. Troy Davis has one of the huge ones.

He recently brought it to Silicon Valley hoping it would catch on. He figures there are some big brains around here and maybe one is big enough to get around his notion.

Davis sees the answers to many of the world's problems in the establishment of a world democracy—one big elected body that would help rule the world.

''Imagine if there was a world congress,'' says Davis, the World Citizen Foundation's president. ''A world congress. It sounds crazy.''

It does sound crazy, at least to me. I'm apparently not one of the big-brained people Davis is after. I still struggle with finding the best candidate for the city council. I puzzle over the difference between what politicians say and what they do. I worry about weeds in my lawn and the price of gas at my filling station.

Sure, I worry some about the ozone layer and nuclear weapons and international fisheries. But weeds I can pull. And my gas costs I can cut by driving less. As for the big world stuff, it's a bandwidth problem. I don't have it.

Davis, who lives in Germany, has thought a lot about this, so he has the drop on me there. He studied physics at Harvard. Went to work on Wall Street and then for international environmental organizations.

He inherited his passion and the World Citizen Foundation. His dad, Garry Davis, became famous when he renounced his U.S. citizenship after World War II. The father called himself a citizen of the world and founded the non-profit.

The world government idea has been around for years in different forms. Davis' form isn't clear yet, though he says it would not replace national governments. The exact form is something he wants to get people talking about.

Silicon Valley should get used to this. This is a place of big brains and big wallets, both of which are needed for big ideas.

Presidential candidates already see this area as a political ATM. Stop by. Say hi. Make withdrawal. Davis puts it this way: Silicon Valley built the new global economy. Maybe now it can build the new global government.

Former Raychem CEO Bob Saldich introduced Davis around the valley last month. Saldich says he was taken by Davis' global idea. The two say it will take about $10 million to get the world democracy ball rolling.

''Now we're looking for some angels, in the valley jargon,'' Davis says.

Wealthy angels who are willing to invest in an idea that brings only social returns.

Unlike everyone else here, Davis is in no hurry.

''Let's say it takes 10 years or 20 years to reach a world democracy,'' he says. ''What's that in the history of the world?''

Not much in the history of the world. But still not long enough for me to let this idea sink in.

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