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Print Edition StoriesFriday, November 14, 2008
How I See It
Will alternative energy become the new computer?
By James M. Connolly
MHT reporter Efrain Viscarolasaga on NECN: Green tech brings jobs back to Mass.
Maybe it’s no coincidence that the column just below this one has a similar theme. I’ve been speaking with a few people about the parallels between the computer revolution of the late 1970s and 1980s — when PCs, minicomputers and boatloads of software companies drove the Massachusetts economy — and the clean energy movement. The scenarios aren’t quite the same, but there are plenty of reasons to think that New England is missing a huge opportunity if our entrepreneurs, financiers and government leaders don’t place the region in a leadership role in clean energy, just as the region was among the dominant players in the computer revolution of the 1980s.
Let’s go through a history lesson, because at least a few MHT readers were slurping baby food back in the 1970s. Things were pretty depressing around here by the mid ’70s, and not just because of disco. We were in a nasty recession with oil prices quadrupling and the prime interest rate hitting 12 percent.
In Massachusetts, there was political turmoil because of taxes and busing, and we endured the Boston Massacre Round Two, when the state’s penalty for voting for George McGovern was Richard Nixon’s decimation of the defense sector here. Air Force bases were cut to the bone, the Navy and Army facilities that populated the waterfront were shuttered, and defense and aerospace contractors along Route 128 were blackballed. I’ll never forget the story of the laid-off electrical engineer who committed “suicide by cop” when he robbed a bank to feed his family. We needed help.
Our lifeline was the computer, and it drove our economy from the late 1970s through the Internet boom years. Everyone knows that Massachusetts was a hotbed for minicomputers. It wasn’t just Digital Equipment Corp. that saw a new market for less expensive and more flexible computers. DEC got the attention, but dozens of companies were selling minicomputers, peripherals and software along Routes 128 and 495: Data General, Prime, Wang, Stratus, Apollo, Honeywell and others employed tens of thousands, and the trickle-down effect brought new housing, automobile sales, shopping centers and even convention business. Yes, DEC did bring the Queen Elizabeth II to Boston as a hotel.
Even while the minicomputer was going through boom times, defying a national economic slowdown, the region saw the benefit of the PC revolution. While the Bay area and Seattle may get credit for the PC revolution, almost all of the minicomputer companies jumped aboard and built their own PCs. Successful from a business sense? Nope. But they created jobs and innovation, and the PC spawned more software companies, Lotus Development being best known.
Most of these companies, the jobs they created, and the dollars they brought in are gone now. That’s the cyclical way business works. However, their legacy remains. Many of their alumni are behind today’s tech startups. That means we had more than 30 years — and counting — of benefit.
Turn now to clean energy
The parallels aren’t perfect. For example, the computer industry was building solutions to problems we didn’t know we had. (OK, who in 1975 said, “Gee, if I had Internet access I could send this spreadsheet to London”?). With energy, we have problems seeking solutions, and everyone knows what those problems are: fuel costs, sustainability, negative environmental impact, reliance on unpredictable suppliers, and so on.
With a strong clean energy sector, we help to address all of those problems. Clearly, it’s good to be part of the solution. But we also help ourselves and our region. Clean tech means jobs, whether for lab staff in MIT spinouts seeking new fuel types, line workers assembling wind turbines and solar panels, or integrators and installers working in suburban back yards.
We have the brains — and the brawn. We have the research and manufacturing infrastructures. And, we have the entrepreneurial atmosphere and the financiers looking for a place to make a buck. Don’t think clean energy is just a little bubble. If we don’t take the lead we’ll be watching clean energy boom in Texas or California of North Carolina. It’s an opportunity based on need. It’s time to move.
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