Transcript 0:00 Talk to me. Information, news, and entertainment on demand. WUSradio.com. 0:11 [on-hold jingle] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT in our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. 0:26 Now, on segment one, we actually talked about, we said the infrastructure, and we actually addressed what if we failed to act on infrastructure. 0:36 We said, you know, we came with this scenario: What comes if America's infrastructure failed? What if we failed to act? And we said, you know, that it's a simple question. If we didn't, what would happen? 0:47 Maybe it would collapse, right? Well, I want you to think about this. 0:50 On this segment, I would like to a- take a unique approach to the infrastructure discussion, and I want to address infrastructure again from the big pers- big picture perspective. 1:03 And we need everyone to be thinking about how we're going to solve this and, and that's gonna be a lot of the discussion again today and, and I want us to keep thinking about it all month long. 1:14 So that's the month of May, what we wanna do. 1:15 But let's first look at something that happened earlier this year, which I think is really important because, uh, this past February, amid heavy rains and flooding, a hundred and eighty-eight thousand people in California were evacuated from their homes. 1:32 Now, I don't know how many of you know this, and if you don't, I'm, I'm gonna tell you, and for those of you in California who do know it, this is, is not something new. 1:40 So forgive me if I'm telling you something you know or you have experienced. But these folks in California had to leave because the nation's tallest dam, the Oroville Dam, was predicted to fail when it mattered most. 1:53 So I, I think we gotta talk about that. Now, years before, various groups had warned of the very issues that would have caused the dam to fail. 2:02 Now, we've been talking about bridges and roads that are gonna fail for I don't know how long, longer than I can even begin to tell you, but federal regulatory agencies ignored this completely. 2:13 They just said, "Hey, you know, there's nothing we're gonna do. We, we can't do anything right now." And as a result, the Oroville Dam's emergency spillway was left to erode even more. Now, people began to panic, and 2:26 I would too if I were them, right? And so no surprise there, right? Everybody's freaking out, and I say I would... I'm right with them, right? The good news here is, thankfully, in the end, disaster did not occur. 2:38 But imagine the panic. Imagine the fear if you lived there and you had to go through this and, uh, you know, you could say, "Hey, that was good luck," right? "That was lucky." But was it luck? 2:50 I mean, I just wanna say, the Oroville Dam incident is just one more reminder that America's infrastructure is in horrific, horrible, horrible shape. I mean, I, I just don't get it. 3:02 We understand it and, and I know this is all about money, and we keep talking about this, but according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, and I told you on segment one I was gonna bring these folks up because ASCE, they, you know, their report card is amazing. 3:17 It's, it's a telltale of everything, um, came out which, you know, I don't know how many times I've noted this before. 3:24 They publish every four years the r- the nation's infrastructure report card, and when they came out with it for twenty seventeen, it earned a D plus, okay? 3:35 And four years earlier, when the report card was released, the story was pretty much the same, a D plus, a near failing grade. If you and I got that in school, our parents, and w- we... 3:45 kids got that, we'd be freaking out on our kids. Our kids would be grounded for life. I mean, you know, until they were old enough to leave, right? We would never tolerate our kids getting those kind of grades. 3:54 But let-- we let our infrastructure get those grades, and we go, "We'll ignore it." How many of your kids are going out for the weekend with grades like that? I don't know. 4:02 If you're parents, you're not letting your kids go out. I know my kids couldn't go out if they had grades like that. I mean, that's horrific. 4:08 I know when I was a kid, I never had grades like that, but I know that my parents wouldn't let me out with grades like that. So the issue is well documented. 4:15 You know, for such a big problem, the solution to me is surprisingly simple. Hello, people. 4:22 You know, unlike attempting to reverse global warming or replace war and genocide with world peace, the answer to America's crumbling infrastructure is pretty clear: investment. Let's put out some money. 4:35 I mean, I don't know what people spend on a lot of nonsense out there, but I see people spend a lot of money on a lot of silly stuff. But unfortunately, investing in infrastructure is complicated and very messy. 4:48 But I'm seeing big governments, and I'm seeing a lot of big companies spend money on a lot of silly stuff, and I get partisan politics are part of the DNA of the United States and, and this is what we do here. 5:01 And I have to give, and I don't know where you stand, whether you're Republican, Democrat, whatever you are, I don't really care 'cause that's not what I'm talking about. 5:09 You know, this division among party lines has been a big part of the stall when it comes to infrastructure investment, but I don't care about that. 5:18 You know, short-term fixes, you know, have helped a little, but at what cost? At this point, put your party politics aside, and it's really simple. Figure out how we can do this. 5:31 And I say it all the time, public, private partnerships. We all as ta- I hate that we all as taxpayers have to do a lot, but you know what? Guess what? You know, long-term failure is not a palatable strategy. 5:43 I get it, but the fact is, infrastructure affects every business and every person in the US. You know, it supports daily life in ways most of us don't think about until there's an issue. 5:57 And I gotta tell you, there's gonna be a big, horrible issue. And I'm not one to be the doomsday panic button person, but that's what's gonna be happening here unless we step back and think about us. 6:09 ButThe state of the US infrastructure is already holding the nation back from doing many, many great things. 6:15 And for instance, in determining the cost of deteriorating infrastructure, the ASCE suggests from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty-five, each household will lose thirty-four hundred dollars each year in disposable income due to infrastructure deficiencies. 6:33 Now, that's thirty-four hundred dollars. Now, that's a lot I can do with that kind of money. I don't know about you, but I can think of a heck of a lot that I can do with thirty-four hundred bucks. 6:45 So I know some of you folks are going, "It's not a big deal," but I got to tell you, thirty-four hundred bucks, I got three kids. 6:52 I can think of a heck of a lot of money, a lot of-- that I could do with that kind of money. 6:55 So perhaps one of the most tangible examples is traffic, which costs businesses and invi-individuals a significant amount of time and money each year. We say this every time. 7:05 I'm going to keep saying traffic because we lose so many people to accidents, distracted driving. Put that money to ending the problem of distracted driving. 7:15 You know, on a grander scale, infrastructure deficiencies impact the quality and quantity of jobs in this US. There's a lot of unemployed people out there, you know? It, it takes a dramatic toll on the nation's economy. 7:30 The negative impact is only going to get worse with time. So by twenty twenty-five, poor infrastructure, as we've said, could cost three point nine trillion to the US GDP. 7:41 I know everyone's going, "Oh, those numbers, too big. I don't want to think about it." But you know what? I'm more concerned about the big hack that is going to cost us more than the trillion I just quoted. 7:52 I don't think anybody's thinking about what that's going to be, and I don't want to think about it, but we have to think about it. That's what we have to do. 8:01 And I have to tell you, again, to the party lines, Democrat, Republican, Liberal, I don't really care again, but I do think there's a lot of smart people out there, and there's a lot of smart programmers out there. 8:13 There's a lot of smart companies out there who, when it comes to supporting and growing the Internet of things, the conversation is truly predicated on the fact that this and every other industry in the US is being negatively impacted by the infras-- in-insufficient infrastructure. 8:32 I mean, I think you can get that. I think the conversation is pretty obvious. And I-- And this is what I want to say. I say this over and over again. 8:41 How can the industry talk about reaching its potential in smart cities or smart energy or Industry four point O, autonomous vehicles, I say that all the time, and anything else you're thinking about when its roads, its bridges, its ports, its waterways are crumbling? 8:57 You can't. Raising the grade on the infrastructure requires leadership and investment. And I'm telling you, we seem to be missing the point here in a really, really big way. 9:11 And I know we have a new president who's trying to say that, and I don't care what you think about all this other stuff, but he's trying to do something to fix the infrastructure, and we all need to be listening because it's affecting all of us. 9:26 And we really need to be thinking about what we can do. We need to be looking at the positive side of how we can all influence it. 9:34 Because all I can say right now is we have a lot to do, and construction is going to play a critical role in this. We have to get our millennials to want to be in construction. 9:47 We have to encourage them that construction is not about doing grunt work. 9:51 We have to take a leadership role and show them that there's a leadership path that they can have in construction, that construction is not physically taxing, and it's not a dangerous profession. 10:03 We have to show them that they can have investments in a job that, that involves innovative construction technology and promotes safety. 10:13 We need to show both the men and the women that construction is a beautiful career path. These are things we need to focus if we want to change and improve the infrastructure. 10:23 We've lost three hundred and twenty-four thousand less workers i-- since the Great Depression in the late two hundreds. Two thousands, I should say. Let me correct that. So every time I quote that number. 10:36 But that's important. And we have fewer women in the industry. Come on, people. We have to get this right. 10:43 And I'm telling you right now, if we don't get it right, it doesn't matter if you want the IoT and you want autonomous vehicles or smart cities or whatever. 10:52 We need more smart people in construction to make this all happen. And I think everybody's missing the really key point here. And so that's what I'm telling you. 11:00 If we don't start understanding this, it won't matter that you all think the IoT is something powerful if you don't understand we've got to start with the infrastructure. And those are the most important things. 11:10 So after the break, perhaps we can talk just about how poor things really are, but what we can do to improve it. Because together, we can do so many things on the Internet of things. 11:21 So we're going to take a quick commercial break as always, but I want you to tweet at me, at Peggy underscore Smedley, or ConnectedWMag, because these are things we need to talk about. 11:31 And if you haven't been up to Connect the World's website, do it. We're putting up a lot of great articles. Or also go up to constructek.com or Constructek.tv. That's our new TV show. You want to see that. 11:42 So stick around. As always, this is The Peggy Smedley Show, The Voice of IoT. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. I'll be right back right after this commercial break. 11:53 [upbeat music] Signal to noise, an electronic term with new relevance on the internet. 12:04 Connected World Media cuts through the noise of data overload and finds you the signal of important information.Information that will keep you current and aware of context in the Internet of Things. 12:15 Peggy Smedley shares her insights on The Peggy Smedley Show and in Connected World magazine, all online at connectedworld.com. Stay current and competitive at connectedworld.com. 12:28 [upbeat music] Thank you for listening to WS Radio. Improve your business and your life with useful information from experts and thought leaders. WS Radio is radio with ROI. 12:44 [upbeat music] With great technology comes great responsibility. 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