2025年5月29日 星期四
The future isn't just coded — it's built
108,873 plays
Lauren Dunford |
TED• April 2025
00:04
As we get started, I wanted to first ask everyone to set aside any
thoughts on current events for the moment, and let's take five
seconds to look around this big room we're all in right now, to try
to find even one thing that was not manufactured. Other humans
don’t count. Ready? Go. Make eye contact when you're done. One
thing that's not manufactured.
00:33
Not actually that easy, is it? Manufacturing is a sixth of our global
economy. One third of all greenhouse gas emissions, about. And
for context, that's huge. That is three times all the emissions of the
United States. Somehow, though, it starts to actually feel even
bigger than that, when you try to think of what, in our daily lives,
isn't manufactured. The trees, the ocean. Fluffy clouds, of course.
But everything we humans make, which is more and more every
single day, is manufactured. So how that manufacturing happens is
so important.
01:13
I want to share how we can all think differently about
manufacturing, why the greatest opportunity of our generation is
manufacturing, and why the heroes of our time, with the coolest,
most absolutely cutting-edge careers, are going to be in
manufacturing. And here's the great news. 57 percent of Gen Z
wants to go into manufacturing. Just kidding.
101:46
57 percent of Gen Z wants to be social-media influencers.
01:50
And that's the problem. Manufacturing has an outdated reputation
as three D -- dull, dirty and dangerous.
01:59
So I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. Friends went into tech,
saying code was the future, but I was a wide-eyed 23-year-old on
the hunt for purpose. I joined a company on a mission to bring
millions of students fresh and healthy food, and I showed up my
first day ready and inspired. First thing, my new boss handed me: a
hairnet. Let me tell you, nothing brings you down to earth faster
than realizing your actual first job is not to get hair in someone's
food.
02:30
But then, I stepped onto the production floor. Conveyors moving,
machines sealing meals, and I realized I had always thought of food
as cooking. But everything at scale becomes manufacturing.
02:45
I spent five years there, and I can never see the world the same
way. Manufacturing is everything. Not just food, but cardboard
boxes, pipes bringing clean water, asphalt roads our trucks drove
on. Manufacturing is everything. But we don't give it a second
thought, or in most cases, even a first. We should. Where and how
we manufacture has never been as important as it is today.
03:15
2We got a tiny taste of it in COVID. Trapped at home. At first, it was
kind of a joke, stores are sold out of toilet paper. But then it cuts
deeper. Groceries, baby formula, N95 masks, when it actually felt
terrifying not to have one. And then, I realized if someone I love
has to go to the hospital, they may not have gloves or masks
either, because we don't have the factories. For critical things, if
we can't make, we break. Even AI. We all talk about the cloud like
it's some magic fluff in the sky. Nope. Every conversation I have
with AI leaders, they're trying to figure out how the heck to build
and power massive data centers stacked full of metal servers,
wrapped in steel and cement, with fans and cooling towers, all
using more power than this entire city. That's all made in factories.
04:20
The future isn’t just coded -- it’s built. If we can't build, we can't
lead. If we can't build, we are handing the keys to our future to
those who can.
04:41
We're at a turning point. And as humans, we've actually had a
moment like this before. In World War II, people rolled up their
sleeves, Rosie the Riveters, powering manufacturing that saved the
world. The choice we humans face today is actually even bigger
than that. It's not just about which countries are going to run our
planet. It's about whether we humans are going to have a planet
that we can live on at all.
05:13
I'm seeing people everywhere stepping up. Jacob Malowa, efficient
solar-powered manufacturing of HIV meds, locally in East Africa.
Olivia Weatherly, optimizing massive spinning machines, making
water tanks in Indiana. Lisa, transforming bottling across Latin
America. Paul Boudreau making coffee pods compostable. Cesar
3Bermudez, making igloo coolers. Beth Esponnette, 3D-weaving
jeans. Medicine. Water tanks. Jeans. Satellites. Sutures.
Speedboats. Underwater drones. Animal crackers. This can be fun.
It can be entrepreneurial, it can be sexy, and it can be sustainable.
05:57
From food manufacturing, I headed to Stanford for my MBA, and I
saw incredible technology to decarbonize manufacturing. Win, win,
win. Lower cost, lower emissions and a sales advantage. First, it
felt like we got this, and I thought, "I don't know if they even need
me." But since then, I've spent time in more factories than I can
count, everywhere from Minneapolis to Mexico City to Mombasa.
And I've seen the same thing everywhere. Energy is a big cost, and
99 percent of the world's factories don't even have the foundation
yet for those awesome Stanford solutions.
06:38
The light bulb went off, and I started a company called Guidewheel
to close that gap. At first, we got started with energy efficiency --
clipped sensors, like little smartwatches, on the power going into
each machine, and launched, excited to see those energy savings
start rolling in. And ... nothing happened. Oh my gosh, I remember
staring so sadly at those usage stats. Energy was a big cost. The
team seemed to care, but they were not using it. Except for two
guys, Willy and Purav. They were logging in all day, every day, like
energy superfans. So we went out to their factory, and their
production team showed us what all the energy teams had missed,
which is that the power going into their machines wasn't just
power, it was the heartbeat of their machines, which was the
heartbeat of their production, which was the heartbeat of their
entire business. Energy was a big cost, but production was the
priority. It's all about production. And production had been a
nightmare to measure and track across patchworks of different
ages, makes and models of equipment across the factories. But
4every machine uses power. And just like you don't have to tell your
smartwatch if you're running or resting, from that electrical
heartbeat of the machine -- that's a real machine, actually looks
like a heartbeat, wildly cool -- we can know exactly how much it's
producing, how fast, and predict problems before they happen. It's
the first-ever universal translator for any machine, anywhere on
the planet, energy to production, and the foundation for real-time
intelligence. So any factory team on Earth can reach peak
productivity and decarbonize.
08:34
For a very simple example, if you have a big machine idling in
between production runs, it's wasting energy and it's wasting
production time. That's just one tiny part of why the hundreds of
manufacturers using this technology are already seeing energy
efficiency improve up to 45 percent, and productivity up 1.4x. That
is a huge impact, and the impact just grows with more scale and as
the power of AI improves.
09:05
These are not dull, dirty and dangerous jobs anymore. These are
clean, cutting-edge, and really dang cool careers. But unless we
bring manufacturing from devalued to uplifted, millions of jobs in
manufacturing are currently on track to go unfilled by 2030. That's
innovation that's not going to happen, critical infrastructure that
won't be built. Edison said, “Opportunity is missed by most people
because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work." These
awesome teams need talent excited for hard work to join them. If
they come, we can build it. Imagine if 57 percent of the next
generation actually was excited to make real things instead of
Instagram Reels. Each of us, whether we care about our countries
or our climate, can help make manufacturing the biggest comeback
story of our time.
510:12
So here's my ask. If you're a parent, talk about this with your kids.
If you're a kid, or a kid at heart, talk about it with your friends. And
everyone, let's thank the makers, because our future isn't just
coded, it's built. Let's roll up our sleeves and build it.
10:36
Thank you.
Note
“Edison said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it's
dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
Clarification: While commonly attributed to Thomas Edison, this
quote’s origins are unclear. For a dive into its potential origins, see
here.
6
