Even more fundamentally, the digital economy's infrastructure has advanced basic material science and classes of machine tools that have led directly to the new high-power electronics (enabling hybrids) and to big, cheap flat-panel, thin-film PVs (derived from the massive thin-film machines that make flat-panel-TVs).

FORBES: Bubble Energy?

That's a mouthful. (Laughter.) Machine shops and automotive mechanics were some of the first classes you could take.

WHITEHOUSE: Education, Innovation & The Economy