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In the second decade of the 21st Century, a major shift took place in the world of ground transportation. Taxicab drivers – long protected by local barriers to market entry – found themselves overtaken in the marketplace by new and disruptive rideshare services. Uber and Lyft drivers were able to provide a cheaper and simpler and more convenient means of getting around. This has created a significant benefit to consumers, though there have been winners and losers among drivers.  Yet, even for the winners, this profession is now at serious risk of redundancy, thanks to the prospect of the driverless car. While still in development, autonomous vehicles could well mean the end of a livelihood – not only for rideshare drivers, but also for truckers and other vehicle operators – in the years to come. However, this is not a new phenomenon. In this talk, industrial history podcaster Dave Broker explains how, between the 17th and 19th centuries, an almost identical process played out in the British textile trade. It was the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and its explosive consequences should be remembered and studied as we face the economic changes on the horizon.

It's been over a century since a new utility was created. Hear the story of how a small local nonprofit, HEET, has innovated a pathway for gas utilities to become a "thermal utilities," delivering you heating and cooling without combustion. Eversource and National Grid are already selecting sites for the first installations, and over 15 other utilities across the country are following along. Hear the story of innovation and how to create social change across boundaries.

This talk explores a key chapter in trans-Atlantic, U.S., and African American history. The title is from a quote from Malachi Postlethwayt, a British mercantilist theorist in 1745. The book on which this talk is based chronicles contributions made by millions of African peoples and their descendants to the vast “wealth of nations” that financed the economic and social progress of modern Western civilization called the “industrial revolution.” The same global process has been identified as one cause of the “underdevelopment” in Africa and other parts of the world. The phenomenal contribution resulted from the uncompensated labor of enslaved Black peoples across several centuries and on several continents. Prof. Bailey has coined the term “slave(ry) trade”™ to encompass an array of activities generally considered as separate developments. This includes the trade in Africans as commodities; commerce in slave-produced goods, especially sugar and cotton; trade among slave-based economies; production of manufactured goods from slave-produced raw materials; and related financial and commercial activities. The story is narrated in three “acts” focused the slave(ry) trade’s pivotal role in three key periods of global history. Act I is a chronicle of Europe’s journey—especially Portugal and Spain—out of its “Dark” Middle Ages beginning in the 9th century and into a new global system centered around the Atlantic Ocean. With a focus on Great Britain, Act II begins in a world of expanding commerce—the “Age of Reconnaissance” or “Age of Discovery” in the 1500s—the period of mercantilism and the “Triangular Trade” when the colonization of the Americas and other parts of the globe was completed. Great Britain emerges as the first global industrial power in the 18th century. Act III explores the American Revolution and focuses on the role of the slave(ry) trade and the global cotton kingdom in transforming colonial America into a world power as the independent United States, a process that continues with the Civil War in the 1860s.

Cambridge Forum and Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation co-present former poet laureate Richard Blanco who reads from and talks about his new book, _How To Love A Country._ As a presidential inaugural poet, educator, and advocate, Blanco has crisscrossed the nation inviting communities to connect to the heart of the human experience and our shared identity as a country. In this new collection of poems, his first in over seven years, Blanco continues to invite a conversation with all Americans.