And former british embassador to moscow recalls the soviet war in afghanistan in afghancy. Many of these authors have appeared on book tv and you can watch them on our website at booktv. Org. Three programs from the recent boston book festival held recently. First up a panel of the future industry followed by pams on wartime illustrations and time travel. Good morning, everyone. Very nice to see you all, welcome to industries of the future. My name is Debbie Porter for those of you who dont know me, founder and executive of the boston book festival. We are excited to have such unbelievably impressive panel. I want to thank ge for generously sponsoring this session. Bbs can offer this session for free and all the other sessions at the boston book festival thanks to sponsors like ge and also thanks to people like you who donate and this year we are not auctions, we are raffling a beautiful new red vespa donated to us, just another way to entice you to support us. Tickets only available today at the book festival. Just see the merchandise table here at the tent and get your ticket and thank you in advance. I know have a great honor to introducing boston mayor, i think thats something that all of us here can get behind. I i applaud him for that. It is my pleasure to introduce and please join me in welcoming mayor walsh. [applause] thank you very much, debbie, i want thank debbie for starting the book festival. An exciting time in the city. I was about to give a sermon today in a little while so i will try not to unless you want me to go on for a couple of hours, i will. I want to welcome to everybody in the industries of the future panel here in this beautiful church. I want to thank the panelists for being here today and moderator for being here and i know this session is going to be excited for a lot of people timely. Each speakers are distinguished and experts on the topic. Together they represent the echo innovation, Innovation Ecosystem in our cities here in boston and i know that sounds like a buzz word. I use that word a lot when im talking to groups but it truly has such a real meaning as a parred. Our citys economic success and global reputation is built from our ecosystem, our university research, entrepreneurs, global product leaders, thank you for sponsoring and choosing boston to put headquarters, to the great city. Different feeds that feed to the mighty river. Global leadership was built on Life Sciences. We understand the transformative value of this kind of positioning not just here in the United States of america but in the world was built on the life science, for example, we create partnership with cities and town up and down the red vine, the first time really that embraced regionally in the cities that we are talking about are boston, obviously, cambridge, chelsea. We think about the strength of those neighborhoods and those areas. We all have ability to build housing and we have the Common Thread of the red line that goes through the middle of it and we talked about not being jealous and not trying to take businesses from each others city but how do we build and build to something important. It allows us to really look more realistically as a region rather than municipality. As i go around the country, they say that i represent 2 Million People in the United States, 6 Million People in the city, when i think about boston, we think as a city, we have over 2. 1 Million People living, so it really helps us create opportunities n. The last few years we have moved to the forefront in the wide range of innovation industries. Every week it seems like im opening and cutting a ribbon of Something Like that and new facilities, ge, just to name a few. Im also looking at the work space that is spaces that these companies have. They all try to outdo each other. Last week i cut ribbon with robotic arm, something new. We broke ground using Virtual Reality and we had a pair of scissors from 120 years ago. But theres a growing confidence and optimism in the city and Economic Future and i think that as the city when i think about it and look at the crowd here today, we are a great city, we are going to an incredible trance foration transformation is not in every city either. Its important for us as government and society and businesses to really look to see how we can make sure that all the prosperity is happening in our city can be shared across different neighborhoods. I mentioned to debbie that we have 6 billion worth of development in boston right now. That development in the past would say probably fenway area, Downtown Crossing and the district and today i can add to the list of transformation to neighborhoods that havent historically seen a lot of wealth being spent in those neighborhoods as far as large scale. So we are starting to see that. We want to make sure to not just create opportunities but diversify industries that were created and industries created for the future so that industries can remain resilient. We are also working on making sure we create jobs for different skill sets for many people in particular for research and design to prototypes, manufacturing and marketing. Inventors do things they, they imagine what can happen and here in our city we really have a great opportunity to build off that. We are investing 75 million in the first ever stem high school. We had the other day. We had innovation two weeks ago in the city of boston where we were able to 6700 kids across the district really focus on stem. Its something that we shouldnt be focusing on a week in our school and should be looking the entire year for the kids. They are our future. I want to thank you all for the opportunity. I want to thank ge. Negotiation e has ge has been a great partner, 25 milliondollar investment in Workforce Development and in Life Sciences and embraced Madison Park High School as one of their schools that theyre going to be working on, theyre always embraced on middle school, they created another program so i want to thank them for being a corporate partner in the industry of the future. I look forward to hearing. I know all of you are here. Im done talking and some are happy with that. I want to turn the microphone over to get us started. Thank you very much, enjoy the day. [applause] major walsh, thanks very much for that. Thank you for coming out today. My name is andy and i hang out at the business mit and i have the happy duty today to moderate a conversation that involves three old friends and one new one. The new one is to my left, this is alec ross, Senior Policy Adviser for several administrations and a scholar of innovation all around the world, author of the book that we will be talking about in just a minute. Next alec is an old colleague of mine, michael is probably the worlds foremost scholar of industries, so when we are having conversation about them, it seems more than appropriate to bring him into it. Next to him is a person who i think has one of the coolest jobs in the world. Beth is the vice chair and Business Innovation for General Electric responsible for helping that industrial era giant transition into whatever future we are creating an as mayor walsh mentioned ge decided to move headquarters here to boston, beth tells me because largely of boston book festival. [laughter] next to her is the only person that gives her a run for the money as far as having the coolest job of the world, really one of the geek epicenters of the world and a place successfully creating the future for 30 years, we celebrated 30year anniversary last year. We are here to talk about where the Business World is going. Can you talk about the industries of the future. The reason why i think its an appropriate question for you because you wrote a book called the industries of the future. [laughter] yes, thank you, and, you know, on one administrative note, i know its take your phone out when youre in church but the archbishop said and it reminds me a lot in 1994, its chapter of the internet. Here is how its going to change. Chapter one, page one of a variety of different fields ranging from Artificial Intelligence, machine, robotics to commercialization to big data. These are all fields that you can look at either vertically or horizontally that are going to have a huge impact in all of our lives work at home and the book looks at about a dozen different fields and projects, images a little bit what the world will look like, but the underlying thesis to all of this is basically that land was the raw material of the agriculture age, iron was the raw material of the industrial damage and data is the raw material. He had the economic power and political power. He who owned the factories and controlled access to Natural Resources during the Industrial Age had the economic power and the political power. He or she who owned the data controlled the data, can harvest a meaning from the data are those who i believe are going to create the industries and businesses of the future. Michael, do you buy this or is this just geek hype . Is there really a big point happening . Therecertainly is but i think we have to sort of understand where we are today and where we are going to have to spend several more decades. You know, i brought i brought a prop today. This is a tennis racket, right, everybody recognizes it. This is a physical object and we are going to have physical objects in this world forever, i mean, we need physical things, but this physical tennis racket is different because in this handle its got sensors, its got a battery so that it can operate, micro process sorry and Software Running in there and with your cell phone you can actually connect this through the cloud, data being generated by tennis racket. You can get all kinds of new information about your play from this device and the data it generates. What is really happening right now and was built on the foundation that started a long time ago, the internet was a big piece of it. We are merging the physical and the digital together. Thats whats happened. We are embedding sensors and Information System and the ability to gather and collect data inside of physical objects. You know, they make aircraft engines and now engines are a personal or fusion and part of that is making the physical object more effective and create a lot more value. They can do more, it could be more customized. You can know if its going to break before it breaks, you can find out if its overheating or something is going wrong before it breaks but the devices also generating this new information, the new data is coming from all of these devices that are now instrumented with the sensors and can connect and all of a sudden we have the tremendous body of data, ref to remember theres still going to have to always be physical and connect physical to digital and make sense out of all the new data that we now have. Thats the real competitive advantage. We are not going to have Industrial Companies go away and be, you know, eliminated. We are going to have Industrial Companies being more effective than ever. This is going to be the golden age of things, things arent going away, but things can do more and we can be smarter about how we use things. Its a its a very positive step forward for business, but its hard, its really hard to do. Its changing what a Company Looks like and how it appears and what skills it needs and the competition that is created by this is a different kind of competition and we have to understand differently. So something really, really big is happening. Its not machines taking over for a long time, but its a powerful new era where the things that we all use and need in the world can be much more effective and much more value creating for us. Beth, would you look at the tennis racket and hear michael talk, does that scare you or excite you . Theres a massive transitioning happening. You to bring that together with kind of a new skill set. For one it terrifies because im not a good tennis player. It also would make me better and thats the point of it. Its a better fie if youre a 140yearold Industrial Company and you wake up as we did six years ago and said, wow, we need to figure that intersection of digital and physical. Why would we care . Partly because as michael said, the stuff isnt the physical stuff is not going away but it needs to get more efficient and theres been a lot of efficiency that people were hoping to get from the internet on the consumer side that really hasnt come some of it has happened but we havent seen anything yet to whats going to happen in industry. Thats what we start today see. Our customers are saying, great, i love that jet engine but really what i need is i need it to move faster, not because we cant make it move faster but too much stuff in the system. Its not a very efficient system. The ability to take sensors and controls and manufacture them inside the hardware, added manufacturing, its literally embedded in the material but to be able to create a data stream then you can start to analyze and say, if i can give that railroad one mile faster, one mile faster i can save them 200 million a year. So to be able to take that data and turn it into insights and then it gets sort of crazy and exciting and scary all at once. The teams at Research Labs are creating what we call a digital twin. Basically a simulating artifact of every machine that we make and the ability to simulate from to know data from the moment it was designed all the way through manufacturer to being worked in the field, the temperature, the frequency, the materials and to be able to start over time, this is going to be a while, start to assimilate and be able to predict things so you know its going to blow, we better take corrective action before it becomes a catastrophe and shuts our company down or whatever. Thats really the vision and what got us so excited but youre exactly right, how do you bring the people together, you dont want to get rid of the great material scientists, mechanical engineers, electrical engines and its awkwarder mashup which im sure we will get to. We are not Getting Better at being efficient and converting our inputs into outputs. Beth, if im hearing you right, youre pretty optimistic that the next decade is going to be different than the previous decade. We do because of the data. We society a goal if we can get industry 1 better, multiple billions of dollars if not trillion or more return productivity to industry. Mckenzie has a statistic. Understand the performance of a jet engine from afar so you can take maintenance. All those kinds of things, know where my stuff is so i can more efficient and how i use it is the first phase. You and i both know the gibson quote, the future is already here its just not evenly distributed, youre in charge of the part of the world is future is farthest along. Can you give us a report from that frontier, what are we not talking about enough yet thats going to be really fantastic . Well, i think and im trying to remember. I think its called amaras law but theres a rule that people overestimate shortterm impact and under estimate longterm impact. One of the fas fascinating things about internet it has been a transformation. Ge runs great snarky ads and kid gets a job and makes fun of the others. I heard one person say 15 of gdp that you can do purely digitally and consumer without lots of industry, without lots of science, without lots of hippa and the majority of the world is still there. So its the hospitals, all the difficult stuff. Whats interesting being out here in boston youre close to the government, youre closer to realworld problems, youre closer to industry, youre closer into biotech and science. The real science of trying to cure cancer, trying these are now start to go con converge and i think that transformation is just happening and it really is the Big Companies and the industrial internet. I also feel that we also see ai internet things, theres also things like Digital Currencies and convergance and i think a lot of people try to solve it because specially because a lot of the computerscience based companies have done so well financially. Its the old idea, that if theyre rich they must be smart. They built a model that made them a lot of money. Now we have to tie it in a very way. We have to bring the social scientists, lawyers, doctors, biologists and that part hasnt grown yet. Im worried a little bit. We are investing as if it were a done deal and its not. We are deploying ai without understanding how we are going to do the control. Im a bit worried that some of the pieces are happening in an slightly awkward order. What is your cristal ball tell you about the time scale for these innovations actually defusing throughout the boring old fashion economy . Theres a great paper in nature by crawford, but she says people are afraid of Artificial Intelligence, super intelligence but the world is already taking over by dumb machines and we dont even know it, right . I think whats interesting is sort of getting into society in a weird way. Ai is word because it has probably a dozen or two breakthroughs that need to happen and you cant predict breakthroughs. Thats one of the problems. A couple of breakthroughs, for instance, its hard to time that and its the same with Digital Currencies. Regulators, a bunch of things could tip Something Like that, you know, like the digital, the distribute autonomous and weird stuff, but when things happen are hard to predict and even things like vr, this is like the third wave of vr. I dont know if this is a real wave or second wave, Digital Currencies were big in the 90s and they are back. They also come in cycles and hard to tell you exactly when i