Excess capacity, energy, robotics, employment, and the manufacturing expertise of abalones were all topics of conversation at a panel discussion last evening in Cambridge, organized by 89.7 WGBH radio. Panelists included Robin Chase, founder and CEO of Buzzcar and co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar; Angela Belcher, W.M. Keck Professor of Energy at MIT; Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher of MIT Technology Review; and Kara Miller, host of 89.7 WGBH's Innovation Hub. Ben Johnson, host of Marketplace Tech, served as moderator.
Angela Belcher is a materials chemist with expertise in biomaterials, biomolecular materials, organic-inorganic interfaces, and solid-state chemistry. She noted that while humans require energy-intensive processes to manufacture, for example, glass (involving molten tin), abalones essentially make glass at room (or at least ocean) temperature, a process that they seem to have figured out a few hundred million years ago. Her work focuses on making use of organisms to manufacture everything from solar cells to batteries in a green way—and bring the results to market through Cambrios, a company she cofounded in 2002.
Kara Miller commented on robotics and on the Boston area as a hub for robotics business. She cited in particular the people-friendly (if not necessarily employee-friendly) Baxter from Rethink Robotics—a flexible alternative to the single-purpose robotic arms you might see on an automotive assembly line.
When asked what startup he would be inclined to invest $5 billion in (assuming he had the funds), Jason Pontin said he would hesitate to give any startup that much money—too much too soon can be detrimental. He did suggest that investments that would serve the “bottom billion” would be appropriate, citing in particular education initiatives in Africa, simple and inexpensive therapies for treating diseases like malaria, and efforts to deliver cheap, sustainable energy. To that last point, he noted that natural gas is becoming so cheap that moves toward sustainable energy become uneconomical unless the externalities of burning fossil fuels are taken into account. (In fact he may be underestimating the progress of photovoltaic technology in achieving grid parity.)
Robin Chase commented on repurposing excess capacity. People buy cars that they use 5% of the time, she said; the rest of the time that investment remains idle. Initiatives like Buzzcar, Zipcar, and GoLoco are efforts to make use of this excess capacity. (See related article “Professor and former GM exec charts bright automotive future with transformational change.”)
When asked about a recent study from Oxford University suggesting that half of U.S. jobs are susceptible to automation over the next decade or two, Miller commented that employment disruptions are ongoing. Few of us wait in line at banks to deal with human tellers, and many of us check ourselves out at supermarkets and drug stores. She said that 100 years ago, 40% of U.S. workers worked in agriculture. Today that figure is 2%, and we don't have 38% unemployment as a result—the former farmers found something else to do. Those farmers, though, generally moved from relatively low-productivity agricultural work to higher productivity manufacturing work (as has happened recently in China). Now, however, workers are being forced out of high-wage manufacturing jobs into low-wage service jobs that are themselves disappearing, and Miller acknowledged that laid-off CVS cashiers aren't all going to find jobs as programmers at Google.
In developing new skills, she concluded, people will need to learn to work with computers—not like computers.