We sat at the window, by Thomas Hardy, read for LibriVox.org by Carolyn Francis. We sat at the window looking out as the rain came down in silken strings that Swithins Day. Each gutter and spout babbled unchecked in the busy way of witless things. Nothing to read, nothing to see seemed in that room for her and me on Swithins Day. We were irked by the scene, by our own selves, yes, for I did not know, nor did she infer how much there was to read and guess by her and me, and to see and crown by me and her. Wasted were two souls in their prime, and great was the waste that July time when the rain came down. Out of the past there rises a week, who shall read the years, oh? Out of the past there rises a week, enringed with the purple zone. Out of the past there rises a week, when thoughts were strung too thick to speak, and the magic of its lineaments remains with me alone. In that week there was heard a singing, who shall spell the years, the years? In that week there was heard a singing, and the white owl wondered why. In that week, yea, a voice was ringing, and forth from the casement were candles flinging, radiance that fell on the deardar, and lit up the path thereby. Could that song have a mocking note, who shall unroll the years, oh? Could that song have a mocking note, to the white owl's sense as it fell? Could that song have a mocking note, as it trilled out warm from the singer's throat, and who was the mocker, and who the mocked, when too, felt all was well? In a tedious trampling crowd yet later, who shall bear the years, the years? In a tedious trampling crowd yet later, when silvery singings were dumb. In a crowd uncaring what time might fate her, mid-merks of night I stood to await her, and the twanging of iron wheels gave out the signal that she was come. She said with a travel-tired smile, who shall lift the years, oh? She said with a travel-tired smile, half-scared, by scene so strange. She said, outworn by mile on mile, the blurred lamps warning her face the while, Oh, love, I am here, I am here with you! Ah, that there should have come a change! O the doom by someone spoken! Who shall unseal the years, the years? Oh, the doom that gave no token, when nothing of bale saw we! Oh, the doom by someone spoken! Oh, the heart by someone broken! The heart whose sweet reverberances are all time leaves to me! Afternoon service at Melstock, by Thomas Hardy, read for LibriVox.org by Craig Allen. On afternoons of drowsy calm we stood in the paneled pew, singing one voice to Tate and Brady's Psalm to the tune of Cambridge New. We watched the elms, we watched the rooks, the clouds upon the breeze, between the wiles of glancing at our books and swaying like the trees. So mindless were those outpourings, though I am not aware, that I have gained by subtle thought on things since we stood solming there. End of poem This recording is in the public domain. First sight of her and after by Thomas Hardy. Recorded for LibriVox.org by Craig Allen. A day is drawing to its fall I had not dreamed to see. The first of many to enthrall my spirit will it be? Or is this eve the end of all such new delight for me? I journey home the pattern grows, of moonshades on the way. Soon the first quarter, I suppose, sky-glancing travellers say, I realise that it, for those, has been a common day. End of poem This recording is in the public domain. She looked like a bird from a cloud on the clammy lawn, moving alone, bare-browed in the dim of dawn. The candles alight in the room for my parting meal made all things without doors loom, strange, ghostly, unreal. The hour itself was a ghost, and it seemed to me then, as of chances the chance further most I should see her again. I beheld not where all was so fleet that a plan of the past which had ruled us from birth-time to meet was in working at last. No prelude did I there perceive to a drama at all, or foreshadow what fortune might weave from beginning so small. But I rose as if quick by a spur I was bound to obey, and stepped through the casement to her, still alone in the grey. I am leaving you, farewell, I said, as I followed her on, by an alley bare-bowls overspread. I soon must be gone. And then the scale might have been turned against love by a feather, but crimson one cheek of hers burned when we came in together. At a bygone western country fair I saw a giant led by a dwarf, with a red string like a long thin scarf. How much he was the stronger there, the giant seemed unaware. And then I saw that the giant was blind, and the dwarf, a shrewd-eyed little thing, the giant, mild timid, obeyed the string, as if he had no independent mind, or will of any kind. Wherever the dwarf decided to go, at his heels the other trodded meekly, perhaps I know not reproaching weakly, like one fate bade that it must be so, whether he wished or know. Various sights in various clines I have seen, and more I may see yet, but that sight never shall I forget, and have thought at the sorriest of pantomimes, if once a hundred times. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. The Five Students by Thomas Hardy, read for LibriVox.org by James Gladwin. The Five Students The sparrow dips in his wheel-rutt bath, the sun grows passion-eyed, and boils the dew to smoke by the paddock path, as strenuously we stride, five of us, dark he, fair he, dark she, fair she, I, all beating by. The air is shaken, the high-road hot, shadowless, swoons the day, the greens are sobered and cattle at rest, but not we on our urgent way, four of us, fair she, dark she, fair he, I are there, but one elsewhere. Autumn moulds the hard-fruit mellow, and forward still we press, through moors, briar meshed plantations, clay pits yellow, as in the spring hours, yes, three of us, fair he, fair she, I as here to four, but fallen one more. The leaf drops. Earthworms draw it in at night-time noiselessly. The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin, and yet on the beat are we, two of us, fair she, I, but no more left to go, the track we know. Icicles tag the church aisle-leads, the flag-rope gibbers' horse, the home-bound foot-folk wrap their snowflake-heads, yet I still stork the course. One of us, dark and fair he, dark and fair she, gone. The rest, earn on. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Afterwards, by Thomas Hardy, read for LibriVox.org by James Gladwin. In the present has latched its poston behind my tremulous stay, and the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, delicate-filmed as new-spun silk. Will the neighbours say? He was a man who used to notice such things. If it be in the dusk, when, like an eyelids, soundless blink, the dew-fall-hawk comes crossing the shade to a light upon the wind-walked upland thorn, a gazer may think, to him this must have been a familiar sight. If I pass, during some nocturnal blackness, moth-y and warm, when the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn, one may say, he strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm, but he could do little for them, and now he is gone. If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door, watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees, will this thought rise on those who will beat my face no more? He was one who had an eye for such mysteries. And will any say, when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom, and a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings, till they rise again as they were a new bell's boom. He hears it not now, but used to notice such things. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Background and the Figure, Lovers' Ditty, by Thomas Hardy I think of the slope where the rabbits fed, of the para-winks rockwork lair, of the fuchsias ringing their bells of red, and the something else seen there. Between the blooms where the sod-bast bright, by the bobbing fuchsia trees, was another and yet more isam-sight, the sight that richened these. I shall seek those beauties in the spring, when the days are fit and fair, but only as foils to the one more thing that also will flower there. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Figure in the Scene, by Thomas Hardy Red for LibriVox.org by Cricket It pleased her to step in front and sit where the cragged slope was green, while I stood back that I might pencil it with her amid the scene, till it gloomed and reigned, but I kept on, despite the drifting wet that fell and stained my draught, leaving for curious quizzings yet the blots ingrained. And thus I drew her there alone, seated amid the gauze of moisture hooded, only her outline shone with rainfall marked across. Even past our stay, yet her rainy form is the genius still of that spot immutable, yeah, though the place now knows her no more and has known her not ever since that day. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Young Church Warden, by Thomas Hardy Red for LibriVox.org by Cricket When he lit the candles there and the light fell on his hand, and it trembled as he scanned her and me, his vanquished air hinted that his dream was done, and I saw he had begun to understand. When Love's vial was on strung, saw I wish the hand that shook had been mine that shared her book, while that evening him was sung, his the victors, as he lit candles where he had bidden a sit with vanquished look. Now her dust lies listless there, his the far from tending hand, what avails the victory scanned? Does he smile from upper air? Ah, my friend, your dream is done, and is you who have begun to understand. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Dolls, by Thomas Hardy Red for LibriVox.org by Leanne Howlett Whenever you dress me dolls, Mammy, why do you dress them so, and make them gallant soldiers, whenever a one I know, and not as gentle ladies with frills and frocks and curls, as people dress the dollies of other little girls? Ah, why did she not answer? Because your Mammy's heed is always gallant soldiers, as well may be indeed. One of them was your daddy, his name I must not tell. He's not the dad who lives here, but one I love too well. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Life Laughs Onward, by Thomas Hardy Red for LibriVox.org by Leanne Howlett Rambling I looked for an old abode, where, years back, one had lived I knew. This sighted dwelling duly showed, but it was new. I went where, not so long ago, the sod had riven two breasts asunder. Daisy's throw gaily there, as though no grave were under. I walked along a terrace where loud children gambled in the sun. The figure that had once sat there was missed by none. Life laughed and moved on unsubdued. I saw that old succumbed to young, twas well. My too regretful mood died on my tongue. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Pink Frog, by Thomas Hardy Red for LibriVox.org by Leanne Howlett Oh, my pretty Pink Frog, I shan't be able to wear it. Why is he dying just now? I hardly can bear it. He might have contrived to live on, but they say there's no hope whatever, and must I shut myself up and go out never? Oh, my pretty Pink Frog, puffs sleeved and accordion pleaded. He might have passed in July, and not so cheated. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Peace Offering, by Thomas Hardy Red for LibriVox.org by David Butler It was but a little thing, yet I knew it meant to me ease from what had given a sting to the very bird singing laterally. But I would not welcome it, and for all I then declined, oh, the regretting's infinite, when the night processions flit through the mind. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Glimpse, by Thomas Hardy Red for LibriVox.org by David Barnes She sped through the door, and following in haste and stirred to the core I entered hot-faced. But I could not find her. No sign was behind her. Where is she, I said? Who? They asked that sat there. Not a soul's come in sight. A maiden with red hair. Ah, they paled. She is dead. People see her at night, but you are the first on whom she has burst in the keen common light. It was ages ago, when I was quite strong. I have waited since, oh, I have waited so long. Yea, I set me to own the house, where now lone I dwell in void rooms, booming hollow as tombs. But I never come near her, though nightly I hear her. And my cheek has grown thin, and my hair has grown grey, with this waiting therein. But she still keeps away. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Pedestrian, an Incident of 1883 By Thomas Hardy Red for LibriVox.org by David Barnes Sir, will you let me give you a ride? Knox Vainett, and the Heath is wide. My fight on Lantern shone on one young, fair, even fresh, but burdened with flesh. A leavened satchel at his side, his breathing short, his coat undone. Tos as if his corpulent figure slopped with the shake of his walking when he stopped. And though the night's pinch grew acute, he wore but a thin, wind-thridded suit. Yet well-shaped shoes for walking in, artistic beaver, cane-gold topped. Alas, my friend, he said with a smile, I am daily bound to foot ten mile, wet, dry, or dark, before I rest. Six months to live, my doctors give me as my prospect here at best, unless I vamp my sturdiest. His voice was that of a man refined, a man one well could feel of mind, quite winning in its musical ease, but in mould maligned by some disease. And I asked again, but he shook his head, then, as if more were due, he said, A student was I of Schopenhauer, Kant, Hegel, and the fountained bower of the muses too knew my regard. But ah, I fear me, the grave gapes near me. Would I could this gross sheath discard and rise an ethereal shape unmarred? How I remember him, his short breath, his aspect marked of early death, as he dropped into the night forever, one caught in his prime of high endeavour, from all philosophies soon to sever, through an unconscious trick of time. He often would ask us that, when he died, after playing so many to their last rest, if out of us any should hear abide, and it would not task us, we would with our loots play over him, by his grave brim, the psalm he liked best, the one whose scent suits Mount Ephraim, and perhaps we should seem to him in death's dream like the Seraphim. As soon as I knew that his spirit was gone, I thought this is due, and spoke there upon. I think, said the vicar, a red-serve is quicker than vials out of doors in these frosts and whores. That old-fashioned way requires a fine day, and it seems to me it had better not be. Hence, that afternoon, though never knew he that his wish could not be, to get through it faster, they buried the master without any tune. But was said that when at the dead of next night the vicar looked out, there struck on his ken, thronged round about, where the frost was graying the head-stone grass, a band all in white, like the saints in church-glass, singing and playing the ancient stave by the choir master's grave. Such the tenor man told when he had grown old. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Memorial Brass, 1860-something, by Thomas Hardy, read for LibriVox.org, by David Barnes. Why do you weep there, oh sweet lady? Why do you weep before that brass? I am a mere student sketching the medieval. Is some late death lined there, alas? Your fathers? Well, all pay the debts that paid he. Young man, oh, I must tell, my husbands. And under his name I set mine, and my death. Its date left vacant, till my heirs should fill it, stating me faithful till my last breath.  Oh, wait, for last month I remarried, and now I fear it was a deed amiss. We've just come home, and I am sick and saddened at what the new one will say to this. And will he think, think that I should have tarried? I may add surely, with no wish to harm him, that he is a temper, yes, I fear. And when he comes to church next Sunday morning and sees that written, oh dear, oh dear. Madam, I swear your beauty will disarm him. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Paying Calls by Thomas Hardy Read for LibriVox.org By David Barnes I went by footpath and by style, beyond where bustle ends, strayed here a mile and there a mile, and called upon some friends. On certain ones I had not seen for years past, did I call, and then on others who had been the oldest friends of all. It was the time of mid-summer, when they had used to roam, but now, though tempting was the air, I found them all at home. I spoke to one and other of them, by mound and stone and tree. Of things we had done ere days were dim, but they spoke not to me. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Upper Birch Leaves by Thomas Hardy Read for LibriVox.org By David Barnes Warm yellowy-green in the blue serene, how they skip and sway on this autumn day. They cannot know what has happened below, that their bowels down there are already quite bare, that their own will be when a week has passed, for they jig as in glee to this very last. But no, there lies at times in their tune a note that cries what at first I fear I did not hear. Oh, we remember at each wind's hollow, though life holds yet. We go hence soon, for it is November, but that you follow you may forget. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. He fears his good fortune, by Thomas Hardy Read for LibriVox.org By David Barnes There was a glorious time, at an epoch of my prime, morning's barrel be spread, and evening's golden red, nothing grey. And in my heart I said, however this chance to be, it is too full for me, too rare, too rapturous, rash, its spell must close with a crash some day. The radiance went on, and on, and yet an on, and sweetness fell around, like manor on the ground. I have no claim, said I, to be thus crowned. I am not worthy this. Must it not go amiss? Well, let's the end foreseen come duly. I am serene. And it came. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Jubilate by Thomas Hardy Read for LibriVox.org By David Barnes The very last time I ever was here, he said, I saw much less of the quick than I saw of the dead. He was a man I had met somewhere before, but how or when I now could recall no more. The heezy, mazy moonlight, at one in the morning, spread out as a sea across the frozen snow, glazed to live sparkles, like the great breastplate adorning the priest of the temple, with oorim and thumim aglow. The yew-tree arms glued hard to the stiff, stark air, hung still in the village sky as theatre scenes, when I came by the churchyard wall, and halted there, at a shot-in sound of fiddles and tambourines. And as I stood harkening, dulcimers, hoat boys and shawms, and violin cellos, and the three-stringed double bass joined in, and were intermixed with the singing of psalms. And I looked over at the dead men's dwelling-place. Through the shine of the slippery snow I now could see, as it were through a crystal roof, a great company of the dead, minuetting in stately step underground, to the tune of the instruments I had before heard sound. It was Eden new, and dancing they sang in a chore. We are out of it all, yea, in little ease, cramped no more. And their shrouded figures pacing with joy I could see, as you see the stage from the gallery, and they had no heed of me. And I lifted my head, quite dazed, from the churchyard wall, and I doubted not that it warned I should soon have my call, but then in the ashes he emptied the dregs of his cup, and onward he went, and the darkness swallowed him up. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. I thought my heart, by Thomas Hardy, read for LibriVox.org by David Barnes. I thought my heart that you had healed of those sore smartings of the past, and that the summers had oversealed all mark of them at last. But closely scanning in the night I saw them standing crimson-bright, just as she made them. Nothing could fade them, yea, I can swear that there they were, they still were there. Then the vision of her who cut them came, and looking over my shoulder said, I am sure you deal me all the blame for those sharp smarts and red, but meet me, dearest, to-morrow night, in the churchyard at the moon's half-height. And so strange a kiss shall be mine, I wish, that you'll cease to know if the wounds you show be there or no. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Shadow on the Stone by Thomas Hardy. Read for LibriVox.org by David Butler. I went by the druid-stone that broods in the garden, white and lone, and I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows that, at some moments, fall their own, from the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing, and they shaved in my imagining to the shade that a well-known head and shoulders threw there when she was gardening. I thought her behind my back, yea, her I long had learned to lack, but I said, I am sure you're standing behind me, though how do you get into this old track? And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf as a sad response, and to keep down grief I would not turn my head to discover that there was nothing in my belief. Yet I wanted to look and see that nobody stood at the back of me, but I thought once more, nay, I'll not envision a shape which, somehow, there may be. So I went on softly from the glade and left her behind me, throwing her shade. As she were indeed in apparition, my head unturned, lest my dream should fade. End of Poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Nettles by Thomas Artie, read for LibriVox.org by Wynne Rola. This den is the grave of my son, whose heart she won, and Nettles grow upon his mound, and she lives just below. How he abraded me and left, and how our lives were cleft, because I said she was hard, unfeeling, caring but to wed. Well, to see this sight I have faired these miles, and her firelight smiles from her window there, whom he left his mother to cherish with tender care. It is enough. I'll turn and go. Yes, Nettles grow where lone lies he, who spurred me for seeing what he could not see. End of Poem. This recording is in the public domain. On a Midsummer Day by Thomas Artie, read for LibriVox.org by Peter Yersley. I idly cut a parsley stalk, and blew therein towards the moon. I had not thought what ghosts would walk with shivering footsteps to my tune. I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand, as if to drink into the brook, and a faint figure seemed to stand above me with the bygone look. I lipped through rhymes of chance, not choice. I thought not what my words might be. There came into my ear a voice that turned a tender averse for me. End of Poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Faded Face by Thomas Artie, read for LibriVox.org by Peter Yersley. How was this I did not see such a look as here was shown where its womanhood had blown past its first felicity? But I did not know you young, Faded Face, know you young. Why did time so ill-bested that I heard no voice of yours hail from out the curved contours of those lips when rosy red? Weeded not the song say sung, Faded Face, song say sung. By these blanchings blooms of old, and the relics of your voice, leaving's rare of rich and joist from your early tone and mould, let me mourn. I, sorrow-rung, Faded Face, sorrow-rung. End of Poem. This recording is in the public domain. Transformations by Thomas Hardie, read for LibriVox.org by David Barnes. One of this you is a man my grand-sire knew, bosomed here at its foot. This branch may be his wife, a ruddy human life now turned to a green chute. These grasses must be made of her who often prayed last century for repose, and the fair girl long ago whom I often tried to know may be entering this rose. So they are not underground, but as nerves and veins abound in the growths of upper air, and they feel the sun and rain and the energy again that made them what they were. End of Poem. This recording is in the public domain. In a waiting room by Thomas Hardie, read for LibriVox.org by David Barnes. On a morning sick as the day of doom, with the drizzling gray of an English May, there were few in the railway waiting room. About its walls were framed and varnished, pictures of liners, fly-blown, tarnished. The table bore a testament for traveller's reading, if such wise bent. I read it, on and on, and thronging the Gospel of St. John were figures, additions, multiplications, by some one scrawled with sundry emendations, not scoffingly designed, but with an absent mind. Plainly a bagman's counts of cost, what he had profited, what lost. And whilst I pondered if there could have been any particle of a soul in that poor man at all, to cipher rates of wage upon that printed page, there stood in the charmless scene, and stood over me and the scribbled book, to lend the hour's mean hue a smear of tragedy to, a soldier and wife, with haggard look subdued to stone by strong endeavour. And then I heard, from a casual word, they were parting, as they believed for ever. But next there came, like the eastern flame of some high altar, children, a pair, who laughed at the fly-blown pictures there. Here are the lovely ships that we, mother, are by-and-by going to see. When we get there, it is most sure to be fine, and the band will play, and the sun will shine. It rained on the skylight with a din, as we waited, and still no train came in. But the words of the child, in the squalid room, had spread a glory through the gloom. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Clockwinder by Thomas Hardy, read for LibriVox.org by David Barnes. It is dark as a cave, or a vault in the nave, when the iron door is closed, and the floor of the church relayed, with trowel and spade. But the parish-clark cares not for the dark, as he winds in the tower at a regular hour the rheumatic clock, whose dilatory knock you can hear when praying at the day's decaying, or at any lone while from a pew in the aisle. Up, up from the ground, round and around, in the torrent's stare he clambers to where the wheel-work is, with its tick-click whiz, reposefully measuring each day to its end, that mortal man spend in sorrowing and pleasuring, nightly thus does he climb to the trackway of time. Him I followed one night to this place without light, and ere I spoke heard him say word by word at the end of his winding, the darkness un-minding. So I wipe out one more, my dear, of the sore, sad days that still be, like a drying dead sea, between you and me. Who she was no man knew. He had long borne him blind to all womankind, and was ever one who kept his past out of view. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. In a Whispering Gallery by Thomas Hardy, read for LibriVox.org by David Barnes. That whisper takes the voice of a spirit's compassionings close but invisible, and throws me under a spell that the kindling vision it brings. And for a moment I rejoice, and believe in transcendent things that would mould from this muddy earth a spot for the splendid birth of everlasting lives, where too no night arrives. And this gaunt gray gallery, a tabernacle of worth on this drab aired afternoon, when you can barely see across its haze lacune, if opposite ought there be a fleshed humanity, where with I may commune, or if the voice so near, be a soul's voice floating here. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. This Heart. A Woman's Dream by Thomas Hardy. Read for LibriVox.org by Corey Samuel. At midnight, in the room where he lay dead, whom in his life I had never clearly read. I thought, if I could peer into that citadel, his heart, I should at last know, full and well, what hereto had been known to him alone, despite our long sit-out of years foreflown. And if, I said, I do this for his memory's sake, it would not wound him, even if he could wake. So I bent over him. He seemed to smile with a calm confidence, the whole long while that I, withdrawing his heart, held it, and bit by bit, perused the unguessed things found written on it. It was inscribed like a terrestrial sphere, with quaint vermiculations close and clear, his graving. Had I known, would I have risked the stroke its reading brought, and my own heart my broke? Yes. There at last, eyes opened, did I see his whole sincere symmetric history. There were his truth, his simple single-mindedness, strained may be by time's storms, but there no less. There were the daily deeds from son to son, in blindness, but good-faith that he had done. There were regrets, at instances wherein he swerved, as he conceived, from cherishings I had deserved. There were old hours, all figured down as bliss. He was spent with me. How little had I thought this! Then those when, at my absence, whether he slept or waked, though I knew not to was so, his spirit ached. There, that when we were severed, how day dulled, till time joined us anew, was chronicled, and arguments and battlings in defence of me, that heart recorded clearly and rudderly. I put it back, and left him as he lay, while pierced the morning, pink, and then the gray into each dreary room and corridor around, where I shall wait, but his step will not sound. End of poem. This recording is in a public domain. To Shakespeare, after three hundred years, by Thomas Hardy, read for LibriVox.org by Corrie Samuel. Bright baffling soul, least capturable of themes, thou, who displayed to life of commonplace, leaving no intimate word or personal trace of high design outside the artistry of thy penned dreams, still shalt remain at heart, unread eternally. Through human orbits thy discourse today, despite thy formal pilgrimage, throbs on in harmonies that cow oblivion.  And yet, at thy last breath, with mindless note, the borough clocks but samely tongued the hour, the avon just as always glassed the tower. Thy age was published on thy passing-bell, but in due rote, with other dwellers' death accorded a like knell. And at the strokes, some townsmen, met maybe and thereon queried by some squire's good dame driving in shopwood, may have given thy name, with, yes, a worthy man and well to do, though, as for me, I knew him but by just a neighbour's nod, tis true. If faith, few knew him much here, save by word, he having elsewhere led his busier life, though to be sure he left with us his wife. Ah! one of the tradesmen's sons I now recall. Witty, I've heard. We did not know him. Well, good day, death comes to all. So, like a strange bright bird we sometimes find to mingle with the barn door brooder while, then vanish from their homely domicile. Into man's poesy we what not went's, flew thy strange mind, lodged there a radiant guest, and spared for ever thence. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Sweet things by Thomas Hardy, read for LibriVox.org by Corey Samuel. Sweet cider is a great thing, a great thing to me, spinning down to Weymouth Town by Ridgway Thirstyly, and made in Mistress Summoning who tend the hostelry, oh, cider is a great thing, a great thing to me. The dance it is a great thing, a great thing to me, with candles lit and partners fit for night-long revelry, and going home when day dawning peeps pale upon the lee. Oh, dancing is a great thing, a great thing to me. Love is, yea, a great thing, a great thing to me, when having drawn across the lawn in darkness silently, a figure flits like one a wing out from the nearest tree. Oh, love is, yes, a great thing, a great thing to me. Will these be always great things, great things to me? Let it befall that one will call, soul, I have need of thee. What then, joy-jaunts, impassioned flings, love and its ecstasy, will always have been great things, great things to me? Before Knowledge, by Thomas Artie, read for Librevox.org, by Wen Rola. When I walked, rose-less tracks and wide, ere dawned your date for meeting me. Oh, why did you not cry, aloo, across the stretch between and say? We move, while years as yet divide, on closing lines which, though it be you know me not, nor I know you, will intersect and join some day. Then well, I had borne each scraping torn, but the winters froze and grew no rose, no bridge bestowed the gap at all, no shape you showed, and I heard no call. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. An Uprating by Thomas Artie, read for Librevox.org, by Wen Rola. Now I am dead, you sing to me the songs we used to know, but while I lived, you had no wish or care for doing so. Now I am dead, you come to me in the moonlight, comfortless. Ah, what would I have given alive to win such tenderness? When you are dead and stand to me not different as now. But like again will you be cold as when we lived, or how? End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Old Excursions by Thomas Artie, read for Librevox.org, by Peter Yersley. What's the good of going to Ridgeway, Kern or Sidling Mill, or to Yellum Hill, blithely bearing Castor Bridgeway, as we used to do? She will no more climb up there, or be visible anywhere in those haunts we knew. But tonight, while walking weary, near me seemed her shade come as to her to up-braid this my mood in deeming dreary scenes that used to please, and if she did come to me still solicitous there may be good in going to these. So I'll care to Rome to Ridgeway, Kern or Sidling Mill, or to Yellum Hill, blithely bearing Castor Bridgeway, as we used to do, since her fasm may flit out there, and may greet me anywhere in those haunts we knew. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Paths of Former Time by Thomas Artie, read for Librevox.org, by Peter Yersley. No, no, it must not be so. They are the ways we do not go. Still chew the kind, and moo, in the meadows we used to wander through. Still purl the rifulettes, and curl towards the weirs with a musical swirl. Haymakers, as in former years, rake rolls into heaps that the pitchfork rears. Those crack on the turfy track, the wagon pursues with its toppling pack. Why then shun, since summer's not done, all this, because of the lack of one? Had you been, sharer of that scene, you would not ask while it bites in keen. Why it is so, we can no more go by the summer paths we used to know. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Moments of Vision by Thomas Hardy, read for Librevox.org, by Priya India. Moments of Vision, that mirror which makes of men a transparency, who holds that mirror and bids us such a breast-pair spectaclesy of you and me? That mirror whose magic penetrates like a dart, who lifts that mirror and throws our mind back on us and our heart, until we start? That mirror works well in these night hours of ache. Why in that mirror are things we never see ourselves once take when the world is awake? That mirror can test each model when unaware, yeah, that strange mirror may catch his life.


So I wanted to first get our panel introduced. But before I do that, I want to introduce our Dean, Dean Mengqiang, is the Dean, John Edwardson, Dean of Engineering, and he received his BS, MS, and PhD, all from Stanford in 1999, 2000, 2003. Prior to coming to Purdue, he was the Arthur Legrand Dolly Professor of Electrical and Electrical Engineering at Princeton. He also has done a lot of work in the entrepreneurship area, in particular the inaugural chairman of Princeton Entrepreneurship Council. In addition to all of this, he has done a lot of startups and written a bunch of books. And in terms of the kinds of people that we see at this position, he's been perhaps our youngest Dean of College of Engineering in a major university. And in addition to all of this, he still manages to do research. And I should add a little bit about his background. Besides doing all of this, he also likes Coke with the scoop of chocolate ice cream, and I should say original Coke, not the diet Coke. And he's very, very energetic. And in terms of what I have seen, where we are going, or we are certainly onto a new curve. So thank you for all of you to come here. Thank you, Kavik. Indeed, real Coke, no diet Coke. And today's panel, I think, is a fantastic demonstration of real energy, a lot of caffeine intellectually involved here. So, you know, Kavik, thank you for bringing together this wonderful group from leaders in academia to government to private sector. And since I will have to be on the plane when our engineering distinguished lecturer, Neil Grisham-Fair, will be speaking later this afternoon, I also would like to take the pleasure to briefly introduce Neil. And I know Neil for, I don't know, 16 years or so, 15 years or so, and has always been a big fan of intellectual horsepower and the creativity of Neil. So I have to shorten the bio introduction here and just highlight that Neil is the world's leading expert at the interface between the virtual and the physical, between the digital and the physical. And he has founded this Fab Lab with many spin-out, Fab Lab Academy fund, and there are over a thousand, I just learned, Fab Lab around the world today. And Neil, of course, is the director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, CBA, I think that's by design. And his intellectual spectrum is wide and deep. I just want to highlight the two of the many books that he wrote. One is called The Nature of Mathematical Modeling. The other is called The Physics of Information Technology. And these two books are always on my bookshelf, and I seek wise counsel and inspiration intellectually from reading Neil's books all the time. And of course, Neil also teaches one of the most popular courses at MIT, how to build almost everything. I can go on and on, but I just want to say thank you, Neil, for coming Purdue Engineering today. I'll have to watch the video recording of your lecture. And thank you for our all three panelists and wonderful moderator. Back to you. Thank you so much. I have a mic here. So I also wanted to introduce our other panelists. David Roberts is the chief of innovation of an Indiana Economic Development Corporation. Prior to that, he was the president of Battery Innovation Center and also has a lot of experience in intellectual property. And he's a practicing patent attorney. So he received his law degree in Indiana University and also a bachelor's in material science at Lehigh. Sorry about the IU degree. Yeah, I understand. So we also have with us, in addition to David, Jeff. Jeff is also a very entrepreneurial leader here right across town. He graduated with a BS in economics in 2000 from Purdue and is now in the logistics area. He has had prior experience at Caterpillar for several years. And now at Oscar Winsky, he's been there for a few years and has grown the company from a few people to over 70 in several locations. And they do provide logistics services and will be a very nice person to have in our panel in terms of discussing the growing pains as well as influence of technology in our. So let's get started with our basic teams here. So I want to cover three teams in particular. And the main team that I wanted to touch upon is looking at US manufacturing and the changing phase of manufacturing in terms of influence of all other technologies, CI and machine learning and 3D printing. And we have several other areas that impacted including internet of things and robotics and so on. So I wanted to first open it up to the panel in terms of giving your position for five to six minutes. And then we'll dive into it. So do you want to get started? OK. So my hope is this isn't just statements, but we get to disagree. So I'll start by observing, I hate regular Coke and I only drink Diet Coke. So I took with that out of the way. I want to talk to start about three scaling trends and then about three meetings. So the scaling trends, there's one Earth, there's 1,000 cities, there's a million towns, there's roughly a billion people, and there's a trillion things. Just order of magnitude. There were single mainframes. There were thousands of mini computers. There were millions of hobbyist computers. There's billions of personal computers. And there's trillions of internet of things. Computerized manufacturing was invented at MIT in 1952. There was one of those. I started setting up community fab labs, which are like the mini computers of manufacturing. There's thousands of those. We're now developing machines that make machines. So not rapid prototyping, but rapid prototyping of rapid prototyping. Those are like the hobbyist computers that's scaling to millions. We're developing assemblers rather than printers or cutters that can make almost anything from a small set of building blocks that's leading to billions of those. And we're developing self-assembling machines that merge the machines with the materials and that's scaling to trillions. And so in the same way that computing went from 1 to 1,000 to a million to a billion to a trillion, literally, manufacturing is now going through that same scaling. And so we're right at the moment in that scaling curve that looks like when the internet was invented. And it's projecting to anybody being able to make anything. And so the biggest trend in manufacturing is to recognize that the future is for consumers to become producers. And rather than companies producing and shipping, you actually produce in the same way that computing is personal. So those are the trends now for the meetings to ground it. Last week, I was in China at the World Intelligent Manufacturing Summit, which is the leaders of Chinese manufacturing. These are the virtuosos that do spectacular high volume manufacturing. And they're looking at a number of issues and trends in that. So that was one meeting. Then I was in Silicon Valley. One of my students built and runs all the computers at Facebook. One of my students built and runs all the computers at Twitter. One is a senior scientist for Samsung in the Valley. One is leading Google X's new technology. So they're all up and down the Valley, students from my program. And those are billionaires and billion-dollar companies. But both the Chinese event and then the Silicon Valley is all based on producing for consumption. The most interesting meeting was neither of those. Both of those are nominally what today is about. The first meeting in China was about the frontiers of manufacturing. The second one was the frontiers of business creation. But what I want to talk about was the third meeting, which is one I had in Oakland. There's over 1,000 of these fab labs, these mini computers of fabrication, tools to make almost anything. They're doubling every year and a half. And they spawned a fab city initiative. My counterpart in Barcelona became the city planner, the architect of the city. They have a great design sense and 50% youth unemployment. Whole generation can't work. So they're filling the city with digital fabrication tools as urban infrastructure. So the same way the city provides electricity or clean water, it provides the means to make. So if you live in the city, you can produce what you consume. And that's grown into a fab city initiative of cities all around the world joining a Barcelona 40-year countdown to urban self-sufficiency. So instead of products going in and trash going out, data goes in and out, but things stay. And so there was a wonderful meeting in Oakland of the city, the local fab labs and makerspaces and local companies, about how Oakland can develop in a different way from the rest of Silicon Valley. Instead of diverging income and shipping things far away, how it can develop around urban self-sufficiency and consumption becoming creation. And while that may sound a little bit like a stretch, we're 10 years into that scaling and personal computing blew up the traditional computing industry. And so for me, the frontier wasn't the meeting in China, it wasn't the meeting in Silicon Valley, it was the meeting in Oakland around creating an entirely new economy around turning consumption into creation, which we come back to Purdue now kind of completely turns on its head where we are because you're not training engineers to engineer for other people, you're figuring out how to empower everyone to become an engineer. Okay. So I'm Jeff Frost, I am local here. I come from industry, private sector industry and I probably represent best a small to medium-sized company that has very real issues, right? The same issues that we're hoping to see benefit from in the next couple of years, automation in the workplace. We have the same people opportunities that large-scale manufacturers do. There's this gap between where are you at today and then where are you gonna go tomorrow and how does the technology, how does infrastructure help that? For a small company like ours, we're around 350 associates in a company and we're not unlike many companies that would be of that size and we may not have the scale of an Amazon of the world but yet we have to be to the same type of efficiency standards or we don't hold up our end of the deal and we don't exist. So finding scalable solutions for companies such as us is really kind of where I'm at and what I'm trying to figure out how to be better at. So good afternoon, my name is Dave Roberts. The Innovation Officer for the state. I get to serve the state in that capacity. So for any taxpayer here, thank you very much for allowing me to have a job. Appreciate that and Karthik, Dean Chung, thanks for inviting me to take part here. I think today's topic is extremely relevant to the state and to every Hoosier in the state. By per capita metrics, we are the second highest manufacturing intensive state in the nation. Taking away per capita, we're the second highest by GDP in the automotive sector. So within all of manufacturing, a very critical sector to our future. Aerospace defense is also extremely important to us. Let me tie that into then also the people issue that we get to experience. So roughly, actually over 20,000 students graduate each year from our over 50 universities and colleges in this state with a STEM degree, which is a massive asset for the state. But it also turns out that we're the second largest exporter of STEM talent out of our state. So we have a real challenge in retaining you all that are studying engineering, math, sciences and technology here in the state at companies like Oscar Winske and others. So these are the issues that we get to think about. The, a few statements, I don't know if they're gonna be disagreeing, but at least maybe just to set the framework through which we view the opportunities and the challenges that may be controversial. Number one is that apprenticeship has been dying and is dead. People hit the work floor at Oscar Winske with the expectation that they're going to produce and be revenue generating a creative to the bottom line on day one. And that's a real shocker. I know when I hit the floor at my first engineering job with Lockheed Martin, now BAE over in Fort Wayne, I had no clue what I was doing. I was sucking wind and I was losing money for them for the first two years and that's being generous. But you need to be prepared to hit the ground running. And so that's just a reality of where we are. The second thing is that craftsmanship at scale is dead. That's worse than apprenticeship. And then the third thing is maybe tying back to a point that Neil is making just about proximity of manufacturing. If you think about manufacturing, pre-industrial revolution, almost all manufacturing was local. It was within your hometown. If you needed to shoot cobbled, it was down the street. Then you saw centralized manufacturing and then distributed manufacturing so that you could talk to someone like Jeff and think about complex supply chains. And so what we see, I think we're seeing is a return to localized manufacturing, at least for certain components. And maybe that's where we might disagree the most as to which items can be locally manufactured and which ones will not be. Will they all? And what are the challenges for localized manufacturing, for complex or very large structures? Thank you for a nice overview. So the three themes that we will touch upon, the first one related to US competitiveness in long-term manufacturing and how does, how can it look like or the various forms of manufacturing that can come out of such views and vision. The second part we'll touch upon is what David talked about quite a bit, little bit in terms of skills. Preskilling, reskilling. Do we give up on the current generation and start working on the Gen Z because that seems like a transition period? And then the third part is, again, role of governments and institutions like us in terms of STEM training and learning and so on and sort of making them become thinkers and entrepreneurs. So let's kind of get into the first piece of it. Let's talk about productivity. Of course, we have this long-term vision in terms of turning consumers to producers and potentially localization and of course that kind of eliminates competition in some ways. So in terms of productivity, we have seen a lot of changes because of automation and robotics and so on and so forth. But yet, we don't see tangible impact of technology right away in terms of numbers. Some of the long-term technologies like AI take several decades to have an impact. So perhaps we can start talking a little bit about your very long-term vision, maybe 10, 15 years down the road, maybe we're starting to see the beginnings of it and some of the more short-term needs like what you're faced with in terms of logistics. How do we think about how the transitions may happen? Okay, so productivity, excuse me, I think there's three easy mistakes you could make in asking that question. So the first one is to say not much is happening yet. But remember, Gordon Moore in 1965 plotted five data points for transistors on a chip, and that became known as Moore's law. He projected, he noticed that they were doubling, that he projected a decade, it was 50 years. On a linear scale, which is how we perceive, it looked like nothing was happening and then there was a revolution. On a log scale, it was just a straight line. And so exponentials sort of blow up with the vengeance, but it's one, two, four, eight, it looks like nothing's happening, and then boom, it's a revolution. So the thing where you say not much is happening is a straight line on a log plot. It is a revolution happening, it's just not uniformly distributed. Second comment is don't make a false dichotomy between personal and mass production. So software was Microsoft or IBM, open source software came, nobody pays anybody for anything, yippee. Now we have a whole ecology of customizing computers, app creators, app stores, writing for small markets, up to, they're still Microsoft and IBM. Music was the record labels, or you learn to play the piano, Napster came, nobody pays anybody for anything, yippee. That failed, but now there's Spotify, you sell tracks, there's music creation, and so in each of these cases, you fill orders of magnitude of one, ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million. So you mass produce the things where everybody needs the same thing, where there isn't much variation, you locally produce the things that are different. And that has huge economic value. So we've gone off, DEC created the PDPs that made the internet, DEC failed, was bought by Compact, Compact failed, was bought by HP. HP survived because of inkjet printing. Inkjet printing is in Corvallis, Oregon, because they had to hide from their management in Palo Alto because they said we could make beautiful pages cheaply, but it would be slow. Management said, doesn't scale. So they went and hid in the calculator division. But the point is you don't want every page with a low rate printing adds up to a little high rate printing. So the second point is don't make a false dichotomy, rather we're filling in all these scales that didn't exist. But the most important one for productivity is the third one, which is Silicon Valley took years to figure out in the .com crash that Google gives away its product, it gives away search, but it sells as the benefits of searching. And that's true for each of the leading companies. And in the same sense what we see is that the most important product being made in the fab labs isn't selling the thing you make, it's the benefits of making it. So we have fab labs with Alaska natives that have terrible alcohols and unemployment, suicide, but great cultural traditions, and it's transforming their culture to create traditional crafts with modern digital fabrication. We have them at the Protestant Catholic Boundary in Northern Ireland with violent sectarian conflict where people come together to build a community. We're working with the leadership of Bhutan, which you may know is based not on gross domestic product, but on gross national happiness. Doesn't mean they're happy, but their equivalent of the IRS is the GNH office, the Gross National Happiness Office, and what it measures is well-being, health, stress, all these indicators, and what you have to produce is well-being as the product of the economy. It's all over the country where the making improves the well-being. And so the third point, and out of all of this I'd say this is the key one to take away, is the real goal isn't dollars, it's benefit to society. And measuring that is very different than just measuring economic output. And over and over we find the real kind of product from personalizing manufacturing isn't simply more widgets, but it's the well-being that comes from making. So I have the problems, not the answers. And here's real, a real productivity issue that we face every day and I don't think we're unique in this endeavor. We have associates that are going to start working for us right off the street. And there's always going to be a training curve for them and productivity, your first, we did a study on this in our company. The first week, the person is basically rendered useless. You're taking them through training, you have paid for that time, and you have literally got nothing in return for that associate. We're not unique when in this community is not unique when you can take some of the best manufacturers and some of the best logistics firms, and they may have 100% turnover by pure number in any given year. Do the math on that. That is a lot of productivity lost. Where there's an opportunity, and again, I have the problems. I don't have the answers. So this is where I'm looking for help. How do we aid the quickness and speed of making somebody in a process achievable, not in a week but in a day? Karthik, I think, is some interesting things. How do we maybe, for instance, tie in the human capital, which I'm in the middle of, with the mobility of automation that maybe guides them and aids them into being productive in a much quicker pace. That would be a huge, huge win for industry right now. I preemptively say this. I have the problems. I don't have a lot of answers right now. Just one little vignette on that. We did a study, a project with the Department of Defense that has high tech infrastructure and generally low tech people. And so we did an experiment where we taught at Marmac, a group of soldiers, not how to use machines but how to make machines. And so we taught them machine building. And they usually didn't get to do. They were just taught to work the machine, not to create the machine. And it had this huge impact of it was much more interesting for them and it let them see behind what they were using and turned into a lively collaboration. It was very different than the regimented training they had been in. So I think you'll see a trend if Neil has some of the solutions and Jeff has the problems. I get to split the difference and just be confused for the next 45 minutes, I suppose. But let me throw in maybe a fourth dichotomy and that is, how do you square the circle of increased productivity versus employment? I think there's an assumption right now that as we increase productivity via robotics that we're going to see lower employment numbers. Is that true? Is that not true? Where are we going with employment numbers? So on the robotics piece my lab was doing a lot of work on rapid prototyping of rapid prototyping. So how you go to a fab lab and make a fab lab. It's not just 3D printing or laser cutting but more broadly how you can use machines to make more machines. And to do that, I'll talk a little more about this later today, we had to kind of rip up the internals of CAD, CAM, machine control, motion control to integrate them more closely. But what we then realized having done that is what we're really doing is not rapid prototyping but rapid automation. And in turn what that's leading to is a really interesting movement. I had really interesting feedback from people like if you're familiar with them, Andy McAfee and Eric Brinkelson who have written a lot about the rise of robots and robots displacing work. And they noted something they had never considered was rather than robots being done to people, the robots could be done by people. That the robots could augment people if people can create robots. And so the idea of personalizing automation follows immediately after personalizing fabrication and it's a different development path where the robots augment rather than replace because they don't come from outside, they kind of come from inside. So and then I'll let you ask more questions, Karthik, sorry. So if increasing productivity is based on localized manufacturing at even the personal level what does that do to the cost of the product that's being made? Right, so go back to the inkjet example. Inkjet printing is a low cost per page but it doesn't scale and you have one on your desk. Down the hall you have a laser printer for your work group. In the basement you have a high volume printer and then a few buildings over you have a roll to roll printer. The roll to roll printer wins incrementally but it doesn't win if you consider the setup cost of everything for the local production and so in doing that calculation it's a mistake to leap only and right to the incremental cost per thing. You have to consider the whole life cycle of the effort to design, the effort to set up, the effort to run it, the effort to distribute it, the effort to debug it and then there it's a much more nuanced, much more interesting calculation and only in a sense boring things for which needs are completely repetitive justify the high volume end of it. I just wanted to add some comments to it. So as you increase productivity and start producing more and become more efficient and so on there's also a demand response which is more related to the quality of products and the ancillary jobs that these industries might create and so on and so forth. So it's still hard to predict perhaps or project how automation is going to change the nature of jobs. Perhaps we'll talk a little bit more about that but also we are sort of looking at a transition where skill base is sort of becoming more important in this technology chain. So along with improved productivity which may or may not show directly numbers you can argue about what the measures of productivity are and so I wanted to talk a little bit about the types of technology skills that will become more important but perhaps I can also change the question into something more towards what machines are good at versus what people are good at and where is the borderline between the two and does it vary across sectors. It's one question that I want to raise but also to Neil's comment in terms of manufacturing I think we sort of have to look at software and algorithms and electronics and the physical part of products and the digital physical combination as being manufactured not just the physical side of it oftentimes manufacturing we talk about discrete components but that time has gone in my opinion so maybe you can comment to these two points. Yeah and so I have a way to solve your people problem but you won't like it. Generally innovation programs scare me because they prevent innovation and the reason I say that is my lab has spun off billions of dollars in businesses and MIT has spun off trillions of dollars in businesses. The economic output somebody added up falls between India and Russia so MIT matches the economic output of a billion people which is a crazy number and what you should take away from it is not that at any one time MIT has a thousand or so a few thousand people that are smarter than everybody else it's just culture MIT creates an environment where they're productive but the environment it produces is high entropy I describe it as ready fire aim not ready aim fire we don't aim first because if you aim first you only hit what you aim at we get ready then we don't look and the fab labs I started setting up everywhere I'm joined by my wife Lara who's been to many of these in arctic villages or african shanny towns exactly the profile of the same bright invent of people who come to MIT come out of the woodwork but the refugees from schools full of rules and businesses with regimented workflows and they come to the lab as a place where they fit it's high entropy ready fire aim peer to peer learning project based learning and they flourish in the environment so MIT's core technology in the fab labs core technology is how to create these sort of high innovation high entropy creative environments and so I'm sure if I go a few towns over and say you set up one of these labs out of the woodwork would come kids who are considered soldiers in the school and employees who are considered problem employees and it's exactly because they're bright invent of and creative and they don't have outlets in these places and they're exasperated so I mentioned the example of taking the soldiers and not teaching them as workers of the machines but teaching them to understand the machines and sort of empowering them and it was a wonderful experience and so we're surrounded by brain power but we do everything possible to prevent it to limit it and to constrain it and really thinking about the sort of social technology of it's not rocket science it's sort of ready fire aim project based peer driven creative you don't try to settle all goals in advance sort of that whole package but recognizing that's attractive for brain power and the brain power is everywhere if you don't squash it yeah so Jeff and I found out shared some time at Caterpillar and not to call them out in particular but just to use them as an example of a very large manufacturer of durable goods that has a lot of systems and processes in place there is a process for innovation just let that sink in I mean the innovation really doesn't happen until you start breaking the rules or you get rid of the rules and so how can you have a system for it an ABC system for it now ready fire aim is sort of like a recipe but not really it's more of a license and that's what we really need for innovation and I'm thankful Dean Chung and I were together yesterday but he had to leave early before he had to endure my remarks so this won't be a repeat but as an innovation officer I'm thankful because innovation has become a buzzword but the downside of a buzzword is that people lose sight of what the core really is of innovation it's problem and solution that's it we've identified a problem and I'm sure Jeff could give you a list of a dozen that he's enduring today and trying to figure out and then we all just think well what's the solution ABCDEF no bad solutions yet and then we evaluate which one is going to be the best solution for innovation so let me disagree with that in that that works for a very bounded notion of innovation but for me more important than that is traffic and so what I mean by that is like my lab created a hundred million dollar year business that's the dominant safety sensor for the auto industry to controlling airbags that were killing infants and rear-facing child seats and it came out of I was doing a magic trick and they wanted to contact Houdini and what I had developed was a way to channel fields through bodies to make a spirit cabinet so they could contact Houdini and it just happened an NEC executive was coming through my lab and say my goodness wouldn't that work in an automobile so we made it look like a car they took it to the auto trade show and off it went or my lab created the standard for what became RFID tags the reference readers for auto ID, EPC supply chain and that came from we were developing quantum computers we had to program nuclear spin dynamics and the point of these stories it's a mistake to believe you do basic research then applied research as often as not it goes backwards but each of these stories we didn't realize we had a solved a problem those people didn't realize they should be talking to us the real magic came from crossing dissimilar paths and so I would caution against here's the problem let's find a solution that has a role but I would maximize what's usually neglected which is how to cross people who don't think they should be talking to each other to find these kinds of opportunities to make this less of a disagreement what I would say is that what you've described is solution and matching with the problem right it's still the same components it's just which way are you going and it's in the backwards it's the backwards order which is frequently neglected to the point of not even believing it exists but historically over and over it's one of the most important paths and I think that's important because you know you're going to have a medium-sized company like we are and we don't have the opportunity to really experiment a lot right experimentation costs money and you know so but we're very very opportune on what could be the next structure so I think I agree I think that there is creativity that is absolutely lost in probably today's society that can be fostered and potentially provide benefits to folks like myself we just we have to have kind of that solution that comes fairly quickly into play before we can invest too heavily in it. To make that example concrete I just had a really interesting meeting with the sheet metal industry because I have a group of people in my lab who are leaders in an emerging field of the math of folding there's a gorgeous subject of turning origami into a rigorous mathematical subject but it turns out if you apply it to sheet metal it lets you turn 2D shapes into complex 3D forms as a direct right fab process and there what it means is you need to bring together people who do origami these fundamental mathematicians and then with people who do sheet metal and you know I happen to be an environment where those sort of paths cross but generally you wouldn't have a chance to meet people doing origami as an example So I want to break a little bit to the audience to see if there are any questions comments spin-offs from the discussion so far While you're all rousing up the courage to ask a question I just want to point out something about our bias coming into conversations into problem solving until when Neil said sheet metal what kind of factory did you envision and then when he said mathematics what kind of problem solver did you envision just throwing it out there they're not incongruent they need to come together traditional steel worker and a mathematician it challenges maybe our assumptions coming into a lot of these conversations Hello thanks for all your comments I want to spin off a question based on Jeff's situation and for example start-ups start off with a creative way to solve a problem and it's you can define it like in the beginning it's just innovation phase but at a certain point once you kind of know what you want to do then you like when you for example become a medium-sized company then you kind of know the process you know what you need to do and you're kind of optimizing for a single path so what's the right point or at what stages is it even okay to limit innovation versus always having maybe is the right answer always having some part of the organization which is always kind of hey go out there do whatever you want kind of open innovation what do you guys from my side two parts to that first of all it's important to be clear almost without exception every start-up is completely wrong about its business plan and the only common way the most common way for a start-up to fail is to believe in the business plan what they actually make money from is generally remote from anything they thought and you need the agility to realize you are doing something of use but it's not what you thought but then you're absolutely right it begins to scale and in the life of a start-up there's this horrible thing that happens when you get to about 100 people when you have theft sexual abuse you know all kinds of bad stuff starts happening and you suddenly need insurance departments and HR departments and all these things boring companies have you discover the need for them but then what it leads to so something we've seen in the work I do at MIT is we're talking symbiosis of companies who have to deliver on time, on budget, on schedule can't do free play ready, fire, aim, high chaos with critical functions but they need that but conversely the sort of research I do at MIT when we're left to our own resources nothing happens we progress when it's rounded not when we're doing what companies tell us but when we're talking to the companies and so what's been emerging is an overlay is a really interesting boundary where by law companies are supposed to make money and by law we're supposed to not make money so that's a fundamentally symmetry but other than that we create these multi-functional work groups right at the boundary that straddle them the companies don't try to make our culture but we don't try to make their capacity but instead you overlay them right at the interface and when it works well that works really well but it requires the companies letting go control over saying this is exactly what you're going to do and here's the IP rules and all of that and it requires us really engaging in understanding their problems not doing what they say but understanding their issues I agree it's just a couple days ago and Karthik was actually through our operation and to answer your question you never stop trying to innovate the opportunities that you might have or you'll fall behind that's the fear of a small company that we have is that we will fall behind if we don't continue to find a way to do it better you know for instance am I dreaming up a way and do I have 70 of people right most of them are the pure basic work of what needs to be done on a daily basis so that we can hit a P&L at the end of the day do I have people dreaming up a way that a drone could do all of our inventory accounts for instance in our rack system no but would it help me yes it probably really would those are the types of opportunities that I think they absolutely and they should and I hope they do but you have corporations and companies that are much like me that they don't have that going right now inside of their four walls I have an offer the for this fab lab network so if I start a business at MIT it's really easy to handle investment and incubation but with this fab lab network we had to start an educational program to start a nonprofit to support it and we're just now starting an incubator and the incubator is working with partners like Kickstarter or Dragon Innovation or all of them but instead of bringing the innovator to the incubator we're bringing the incubator to them we're creating a network incubator over this lab network and specifically in the fab lab network there's a group of drone developers there's a couple real wizard drone developers that have spun off an initiative to do custom drones to gather data and so I can connect you to this distributed incubator where you would bring the problem of drones in the factory to them invest in them not as a central thing but as this distributed network and then you in turn would be a test case for them and so I'd be happy to make that connection and it's precisely what I'm saying it's sort of you know it's harnessing more of the brain power of the planet thank you it's cool and that's how it works right or hope how it could work right so it's cool thank you so the question coming back to entrepreneurship and startups reminds me of one of my favorite maxims in life that was shared by a you know the great philosopher Mike Tyson so in the early 90s he was being interviewed before a fight before he met Buster Douglas and the interviewer says you know your opponent has the strategy and in round one he's going to kind of run from you and he's going to round two through whatever he's going to body shots and wear you out and then here's how he's going to beat you and Mike said everybody has a plan until they get hit okay so really in your instance entrepreneurship startups but it doesn't matter even in Oscar Wenske and at Caterpillar you need to be nimble and you need to be able to pivot because as was pointed out the company is not what the original business plan said would in order to do that though you can't just have chaos every single day everybody because I've worked with companies that never could get to an MVP because everybody kept over engineering the solution right so you need to have reasonable milestones and checkpoints where you push out a 1.0 and then you iterate from there if you try and engineer perfection from the beginning you'll miss the good somewhere in between so at the early start of the internet I used to think that it's going to democratize innovation and so on but still we see a few companies dominating the whole space and of course we would like to have a lot more of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and so on and so forth what is your view on democratization technology and entrepreneurship in terms of what we are seeing today and what it can be so if you believe me that where digital fabrication is scale you don't have to believe me you have to accept digital fabrication is scaled from one to a thousand but then you believe it's going to go million billion trillion it means anybody can make anything not in isolation but networks data travels globally but things so think globally fabricate locally is a way to summarize it to democratize it but for your underlying the question then is if anybody can make anything who's going to be the next Google or Amazon but there may not be one is one of the most interesting answers for Google or Amazon there are economies of scales that benefited from the centralization but think about going to a restaurant if we're going to go out to dinner tonight are you going to take me to a chain fast food restaurant are you going to take me to an interesting local restaurant that specializes in interesting ingredients and you might know the chef and it's your favorite one probably that the economies of scale in restaurants lead to what I was saying in manufacturing the least interesting food the most interesting food is intensely local and it may look much more like that than in a world where bits travel and atoms stay and production is local or first of all I have to often explain to companies who want to become like the IBM of personal fabrication to say if the machines can make the machines it's not such a great business to make the machines but beyond that it could end up looking much more like the local restaurant not Amazon where because it's physical and it's local there aren't the same kind of control points in the central economies of scale it's an assumption to believe that carries over and there's a pretty good argument it may not have got more so far students turning into entrepreneurs but it's sort of back to the future in a sense this is how it used to work but with the profound difference that everything I'm saying rests on global connectivity one person by themselves one lab by themselves can't do it you need the global connectivity for knowledge but you don't need the global connectivity for mass transport but is this valid for trucks and trailers to Jeff in terms of the sizes and scales of products that you deal with I don't know to be real honest you know the I'll jump in I'll help them out no it doesn't work go ahead we're in between right I guess it's a good school of thought between the three of us here because we probably come from very different sectors of the world and I'm in a daily rat race which you know is kind of the world and you know I'm here to I want the help of aided technology and the think tanks that allow us to be better is that make my life better tomorrow I don't know and I don't know if I'm answering your question to be honest but that's kind of where that's where I'm at that's my expertise and that's what we're trying to improve upon I I would caution the no so I can't persuade I have to demonstrate but there's things like there's an interesting fabcar project there's local motors is another version these are all projects doing DIY rapid prototyping of cars there's an open housing movement of people doing digital fabrication rapid prototyping on the scale of the built environment making housing there are a number of these examples that are pushing length scales that you wouldn't think this would apply to yeah and I guess where I go to the know is I think that that sample size is instructive and important to see but in terms of mass adoption of you know companies that are going to use trailers every day printing them in their back office like that's a bridge too far for me mentally so I'd love to see it yeah no I for the companies you sell trailers to I completely agree because that's an example where their needs don't vary so much and there's economies of scale and they benefit but the existential threat coming up behind you is I wrote a piece in Politico recently about the political implications of digital fabrication and so you know let's take this microphone I'm holding this microphone I want to buy it today I would go to a store I would order it it would go to a supply chain in a warehouse in the warehouse things would come on trucks that then maybe came from trains that then came from a harbor that then came from boats that then were shipped in a container that came from a factory in each of those steps there's companies doing the containers on the other hand you know if we had one of these fab labs here that would be like say three times the size of the stage I could easily make this I could do molding and casting for the tooling I could do surface mount electronics for this and if you do that you don't need the truck trailer anymore and so you know one of the most interesting questions would be you can do large scale forming but if I'm making the microphone I don't need the container ship I don't need the container I don't need the truck trailer there's a role for large scale forming but a number of those things that are currently being mass manufactured further up the supply chain you don't need right and so I think for us as a state I mentioned earlier we're the second highest per capita in terms of states relying on manufacturing it's an important thing for us to be thinking about and skating to where the puck is going because if not we get caught flat footed and we have an entire population of Hoosiers that are relying on manufacturing jobs that aren't there anymore it also gives us an opportunity right every threat is an opportunity if you look at it correctly and so it's an opportunity for us to punch way outside of our weight class if we're being strategic and thoughtful and adopting some of these trends a bit earlier than our competitive states and then I would say I'm not qualified to speak on this but the guy that was in my chair before went on to the Department of Commerce working for Wilbur Ross thinking about manufacturing at a global scale it really throws the entire balance of trade and power upside down now actually maybe we haven't really talked about it but maybe the raw material manufacturer is the guy that starts to gain all the power because you've still got to get the material itself in order to print is that fair or am I missing something on that one? Yeah so that's a really interesting point right now among the most sensitive battles are trade tariffs I'm sure it's really complex locally the consequences of the current trade wars in the world I'm describing it doesn't do battle against them it's sort of an end run around them if you can ship data and produce locally the tariffs just don't matter but to your point the vendor I buy electronic components from is Digikey Digikey stocks 500,000 different types of resistor 500,000 different types of capacitor 500,000 different types of connector underlying those are just three material properties conducting, insulating and resistive you're made from a total inventory of 20 parts called amino acids and those 20 parts make up all your complexity and so in the upstream research we're not talking about 3D printer filaments we're talking about assemblers of these basic material properties and it turns out that with about 20 properties like conducting, insulating, semi-conducting magnetic you can assemble those 20 properties to make much of modern technology and so you do need material supply chains but biology doesn't rest on finely divided different minerals it just rests on these 20 properties in the same way the underlying research aiming to get rid of the global dependency in the supply chain is boiling it down to this much smaller set of material properties that you can compose and in a very fundamental way that's actually digitizing the construction of the materials at the heart of the research I think we're kind of reaching I want to give the audience another chance to participate and have more questions come out from all of you I think you briefly went over this but for consumers to produce what level of technical expertise would they need to have? So there's two ways to answer that one is take this device so this device has the capacity just a few years ago of a supercomputer not metaphorically, literally this was a cray computer and if you look at the services on this, what it can do this was state of the art frontiers and the most advanced computing just a few years ago if you look at the use of this device almost anybody can turn it on and operate it you all customize it you pick your icons and your themes within any one application often there's scripting things you do to personalize and customize it then one step in there's things like MIT's app inventor tools that make it easy to get a beginner start in coding then there's tools to support one step in coding all the way up to writing the core operating system and so it's not a true false statement there's again a powers of ten and there's things you can do in a day a week a month a year and so we see the same thing as true in the fab labs there's things you can do in a week a month a year but we consistently take people from beginners into mastering the skills at MIT I teach this very popular class called how to make almost anything where you learn all the skills that I now teach globally and we mix engineers with artists with scientists with community activists but what's interesting is the artists teach the engineers about engineering and the engineers teach the artists about art and it's done the best way you could say it is a lot of education including probably what happens here is just in case you stack up an educational inventory you later draw on this style of learning is just in time you're learning little bits of knowledge as you're mastering and then progressing and so over and over we teach people to do it but it's done not by teaching them everything they need to do something but by teaching as you're progressing so thank you I think it's time to wrap up I wanted to thank the dean and also the school of mechanical engineering let me suggest if we have just a minute maybe closing comments sure yeah so I think first of all thank you all for coming I think the future is bright here in Indiana we've got a lot of statistics that indicate that we're toward the leading edge but we can't rest on our laurels and we need really really smart people like the folks in the crowd to stay here and we need folks like Neil to migrate here I think in closing thanks I think there's harmony I think that there's harmony for many of the things that Neil was working on and speaks of and can greatly enhance the world by which I operate in so I would conjecture very strongly the people like Neil are here but you can't see them and so what you need to do is provide ways for them to come out of the woodwork and the challenge I'd leave you all with is you're teaching engineering to Purdue how do you teach engineering to the whole state thank you so much for all your participation and also I wanted to thank the school of mechanical engineering for helping us pull all this together thanks


My dad wasn't present in my upbringing in Dayton, Ohio. Still had to visit him. He made it very clear how much he loved me. He does struggle with mental illness. So there is an intensity to it and it's not your typical relationship with a father. And- It's better. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of like, okay, yeah, I'm in eighth grade. I'm going down to party at University of Dayton with my like bad girl, girlfriends. What's the root of that? Is it daddy issues? Right, because there's five of you. Right. Or is it our American culture, which is I get my worth from men being attracted to me. Like, I look at my diary back then, which I still have, it's terrifying. And it's stuff like a little list of like workout, go tanning, like, I'm just sort of like, where does that come? I mean, it comes from looking around at magazines and TV. Yeah, so what we call daddy issues could just be like status issues. Yeah, I'm just like, and I was scared. I wasn't like horny looking to hook up with a college dude. It was terrified, I had no tits and that's pretty much what saved me. I don't even know if I put that joke in that special. I used to have- You did reference to having- About gymnastics? Yeah. Oh, the only time gymnastics has, I said I, gymnastics saved me. The only time gymnastics has saved a kid from getting diddled. I don't think I put that in. Fuck. We gotta go, we gotta reshoot it. I need some tags. We gotta reshoot it. Just one tag, anyway. So yeah, I mean, I wasn't like seeking that out. I was definitely scared of that, but that is also interestingly enough related to my body.  And I feel like some of my first experiences with my boyfriend, who cared about me and stuff? Robert. How old? He was a junior and I was a freshman. And I'm just sort of like, it's that people-pleasy. I remember I was like, I'm ready to give him a blow job. I drank like two huge bottles of pre-made screwdriver. It's like that, like barely orange. It's like a yellowy orange, so watered down with vodka. It's in a bottle, I can't remember. Did you, when you say pre-made, who made it? It was just like in a bottle that you purchased. Oh, you could buy it. Yeah, apparently at the quick and cold. Great. I gave him a blow job in my bunk bed, my top bunk bed. Are you standing? What are we talking about, logistically? I mean like, I'm like, the ceiling is like this high. I don't even know if I could sit up all the way. We're like climbing in their army style.  And then I was like, I don't think that was good enough. And I did it a second time on the same night. Did he finish? That I truly don't remember. I'm sure he did the first time and he probably was able to reload. But that's like a funny thing for me to look back at. I wasn't whatever you wanna call it, slutty. I had a boyfriend, but it was like, I definitely sacrificed my own comfort and my own pleasure to please somebody else. And that's a consistent thing. Yeah, and I don't wanna get too gendery about it, but like, that's, I did the same thing. To your point of like, I don't know what's this pathological, daddy issue and what's just a human being wanting to be socially connected and like of worth within their circle. Yeah, and liked and why wouldn't you want that? Yeah, who doesn't want like, I'm too healthy for that. No, you just, maybe you have better boundaries if you're healthy, but I don't think anyone has boundaries until they're like 30. Yeah, I'm also thinking too like, what's the key, self love, you know? Like being so happy and content with yourself that it would be like a joy to just have a partner appreciate the things that you already love about yourself. Yeah, I mean, in a perfect world, but people say stuff to you and you're out in the world and you can't control it. And then those things stick with you and you build insecurities and all that stuff. And I don't, and yeah, so that's, it's a part of our anti-therapy movement on this podcast, better help is a regular sponsor. Well, yeah, I get all my, yeah, my therapy. But again, like you, therapy's worthwhile. What I'm saying is the idea of pathologizing everything. So it's like, I only did this because of my dad. Are you sure? Right.  Yeah, and then it comes to the point of like, grow up. I'm just sort of like, you can't be blaming your dad and to your 30s. I know somebody who dated somebody whose dad had passed and it was like, he was still saying like, well, that's why I do this. It's like, what? No, these can't be excuses for your behavior. You can't be saying, well, I do this because of that. Now, sometimes when you haven't analyzed it or looked under the rock at all, it can feel like you're a magnet getting hurled towards the fridge, being told not to stick. It's like, it does sometimes feel inevitable. So having witnessed in my childhood domestic partner violence, I personally didn't think that I would ever be needing to deal with that. My first person that I fell in love with, I was, I think 15, it was really positive. We were speech kids together, both funny. We did the play together, musical together. And we loved each other and it was a positive experience. You know, and we've gone in and out, but he came and hung out with me when I was in Portland at Helium this year, like in November. So we're still friends, like very positive. And I have had plenty of lovely, positive men in my life. So it's almost to the point where when I did experience partner violence from someone else. And by the way, gave no credit to you for that, right?  Like that's how it works. It's like anything negative is because of him. Anything positive is just because I, I don't know why. Yeah. It's not attributable to anybody, even though. Well, I will say one of his things is like a, he's very repetitive and he would consistently say, like, because we had a phone call, weekly phone call when we weren't there during the year, go for spring break or like I told you a month in the summer every other holiday. We would have a weekly phone call and he would say over and over and I think I mentioned this in a special but it's everything's true. He would say, get the education you need to get the job you need to get the car in the house you need then worry about the husband. So I wasn't having, and I never had pressure for my mom to get married or find a husband or have kids, never have my mom's a musician or a music teacher, but she's a pianist. And always very encouraging of my pursuits in comedy and theater and all those things. So I did have a lot of love of pushing me towards things that fueled me and lit me up and support of my dad that wasn't involved in like finding a man and that's my identity and all these things. So it's like, to your point, I had a fairly, you know, feminist take from him on that I would say in building yourself as an individual and not just like finding your other half. Hey, did you like that? Did you like that? Yeah, did you like it though? You want more, don't wanna work, would rather watch videos of me grab assing with people.  This is like when the weatherman says there's a high pressure system coming in. I'm a little, I'm not really used to the green screen.


Oh yeah, now we didn't really talk about the Teflor TESOL yet. As you can see, it was not a requirement. So Teflor certification is not required to teach in Korea, or basically it's not required to get a teaching visa in Korea. So those are kind of two things. There's a lot of schools in Korea that will still require their teachers to have a Teflor TESOL just for their own personal preference. So it's definitely beneficial to have a Teflor TESOL, even though it's not an official requirement, you will definitely get a higher salary compared to people who don't have a Teflor certificate and you also have access to better job opportunities if you're Teflor TESOL certified. Because like I said, nowadays a lot of schools are making it a requirement. So they only hire certified people. So if you don't have a Teflor certificate, then you might earn less and you don't have access to all of the jobs available. So that's why we are offering 30% off today our Teflor TESOL courses. If you watch until the end, I'm going to drop that 30% off link into the comment box. Or actually let me drop it right now. Let me drop it right now. Why not? All right. So I'm just dropping this link. I'll share it again later on, but let me just drop it in right now so people can check it out. So this is the link that you can use to sign up for a Teflor TESOL course 30% off. Okay. So check that out. I'm going to mention it again at the end of the session but just right away if anybody's interested, use that link, get your 30% off. And yeah. So like I said, it's beneficial to have a Teflor TESOL certificate in Korea and also, so for example, I was teaching English in China before I came to Korea. At the time when I lived and taught in China, a Teflor certificate was not a requirement, but then now it is a requirement. So things, laws and regulations change.  So more and more countries are following suit and are making a Teflor TESOL a requirement to get a visa. So I can see Korea doing that too in the future. So it's always good to have it. Thanks so much for watching. We are ITTT, the leading provider for Teflor and TESOL training courses. If you like this video, please subscribe by clicking the button down here and click on any of the videos here on the left for more interesting teaching tips for getting certified to teach English abroad and online.