It was the famous scene where Dustin Hoffman's character gets pulled aside by one of his parents' friends at his own college graduation party for some awkward career advice. "I just want to say one word to you," says the Mr. McGuire character, "Power." In the original scene, McGuire said, "plastics," reflecting the space-age economy of the 1960s. The message behind Gray's edit was that power is the new plastics in an age of electricity-hungry AI.
That reality hit hard at the Energy & Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh last month, hosted by Senator Dave McCormick, Carnegie Mellon President Farnam Jahanian, and a remarkable roster of business executives, industry leaders, and federal cabinet secretaries. Pennsylvania sits at the center of this future-with the Marcellus Shale, leading universities, and advanced manufacturing hubs powering some of the nation's most ambitious energy projects.
