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I, for one, am completely content with airplanes that don't have internet access. For a couple of hours high above the clouds, I can pour over old timey paper and ink magazines in glorious uninterrupted peace. Oh, the perks of the past.

Now onto the future! The cover story in Bloomberg Businessweek, "Why Everybody Loves Tesla," is a stunner.

It doesn't hurt that CEO Elon Musk has a name straight out of science fiction and wears a black velvet jacket as he works the crowd at a "title fight" event, which pits the time it takes to change a Model S battery against the time it takes to fill up a tank with oh-so-last-century, seriously uncool gasoline.

Musk and his minions have brought the digital age to transportation, integrating software so deeply into an elegant transportation solution that improvements are sent out as software upgrades and an entire app ecosystem has sprung up. Every other automaker is scrambling to catch up.

“Software is in many ways the heart of the new vehicle experience,” says TJ Giuli, a research lab leader at Ford. “From the powertrain to the warning chimes in the car, you’re using software to create an expressive and pleasing environment.”

Giuli used to teach classes on the automobile user experience to computer science students at the University of Michigan. Now he wears Silicon Valley-regulation sandals, has a ponytail, and works out of a small office in Palo Alto, where Ford has created a research lab. The space has primary-color decor, a workroom with 3D printers and metal-bending tools, and hosts monthly hackathons....

The automakers are hiring developers by the hundreds, which made me wonder: Where does Chicago fit in all this? More on that later.

While cars don't really light up my imagination, energy does (I drive a Nissan Sentra whose salient features include great speakers, a plug for my iPhone, a nice trunk, reasonable mileage, starting on a dime, squeezing into parking slots and the unlikelihood of theft off a Chicago street). As it happens, I was flying back from a couple of days with Amory Lovins, chief scientist at Rocky Mountain Institute (about whom, coincidentally, I first wrote for a BusinessWeek story on distributed generation).

Distributed generation (DG) is a smarter, more reliable way to design a grid. Rather than rely on a central power plant that loses copious amounts of energy through "waste" heat (looking at you coal...) or through long distance transmission lines (about 7% of energy is "lost" on the journey to the plug in your wall), DG is about producing power—preferably clean—closer to where it will be used, either building specific (solar, fuel cell), or for a neighborhood (fuel cells, wind).

Many, including Lovins, have outlined schemes where car batteries act as portable storage, charging up at night from renewable power generated during the day.

Back to Musk: He isn't only rethinking transportation, but also—and perhaps of even more significance—disruptively innovating the infrastructure of energy distribution with his refueling stations (free if you're willing to wait 20 minutes for a recharge, or about the price of a fill-up for a battery swap that takes 90 seconds). Our oil pipeline infrastructure is old and cracking (see Arkansas, Michigan), and moving oil by rail line is fraught (Canada, more Canada). But if you eliminate one of the major slurpers of oil—cars—not only do you cut the need for oil, but also reduce the mess (drilling, transporting, refining, tail pipe emissions).

As the late, great and utterly fictional Gomer Pyle might have said, "Shezam!"

•••••••

As I read the article, I was struck by how this bold, visionary, albeit risky move is ramping up the gravitational force of Silicon Valley as a tech/innovation hub. What's strong is getting stronger. For its part on the other coast, New York is investing is a new land grant university, partnering with Cornell and Technion (Qualcomm's founder just tossed $133 million into the fundraising pot).

Where does this leave Chicago in the scheme of things?

As useful and delightful as many of the tech businesses coming out of Chicago may be, clever ways to make restaurant reservations, order dinner, find a parking spot, find a sitter, find an apartment, find love, find a t-shirt, find a programmer, find a bargain, catch a train, make a delivery and manage the books seem to be in a different league. Although deeply practical and often admirably profitable, they don't change the game in the way Twitter, Facebook, Google, Kickstarter, Pinterest, YouTube, Apple iTunes, Amazon and, now, Tesla have. They don't create cyber reefs upon which whole digital ecosystems take hold.

Over the next five years, as the pull of coastal critical mass becomes exponentially more powerful, Chicago will be pressed to hang onto talent—which, of course, travels at airplane speed. The kismet of connection is a seductive lure. There is serendipity in proximity, so location matters, even in the era of Skype and Hangouts.

Chicago certainly has formidable assets: universities, techs, engineers, artists, designers, architects, makers, manufacturers, investors. Creating a unique and competitive critical mass will depend on how these pluses come together, crossing disciplines and organizations. It isn't enough to have a tech hub such as 1871—though it, too, is a great asset. It's about the mix, not the silos.

Could Chicago, for example, become known as a center for energy innovation? The city has one of the deepest benches anywhere for architecture, engineering and urban planning. One firm, Smith + Gill, has already created a "Decarbonization Plan" for downtown. Retrofitting buildings, developing better thermal and lighting systems, increasing efficiencies—each is a huge, growing global business. Tap the techs to stir in the "internet of things" and local manufacturers to fabricate product and the story could get very interesting, indeed.

Yet Nest, the first "smart" thermostat, came out of Silicon Valley, designed by a couple of ex-Apple employees. Only on the market for a little over a year, the company now ships 40,000+ of the $250 units per month. It has attracted tens of millions of dollars from investors and has a valuation of $800 million (it is also involved in a patent dance with Honeywell, but so far, so good). Like the Tesla Model S, upgrades are sent as software updates; and some predict Nest will soon open its API to third party developers.

A thermostat.

Really, let's not let Silicon Valley have all the fun, and most of the profits, too...

— J. A. Ginsburg

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