Shift Happens So Get Ready

SHIFT HAPPENS by Karl Fisch
Did You Know ? Sometimes size does matter.
If your are one in a million in China, there are 1300 people just like you. In India, there are 1100 people just like you. The 25% of the population in China with the highest IQ is greater than the total population of North America. In India, it’s the top 28%. Translation for teachers; They have more honors kids than we have kids.
Did You Know?
China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world. If you took every single job in the U.S. today and shipped it to China, it would still have a labor surplus. During the (time it takes to read this article) sixty babies will be born in the U.S., 244 babies will be born in China, 351 Babies will be born in India.
The Department Of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10 to 14 jobs by age 38. One out of four workers today is working for a company for whom the have been employed less than a year. More than one out of two are working for a company for whom the have worked less that five years. According to Richard Riley ‘the top ten jobs that will be in demand in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004. We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist using technologies that haven’t yet been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet’.
The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet. There are about 540,000 words in the English language - about five times as many as during Shakespeare’s time. It is estimated that 1.5 exabytes of new information will be generated worldwide this year. That’s estimated to be more than in the previous 5,000 years. The amount of new technical information is doubling every two years. For students starting a 4 year technical or college degree this means that half of what the learn in their first year of study will be outdated by theri third year of study. It is predicted to double every 72 hours by 2010.
Third generation fiber optics has recently been tested by both NEC and Alcatel that pushes 10 trillion bits per second down one strand of fiber. That’s 1900 CDs or 150 million simultaneous phone calls every second. It is currently tripling about every six months and is expected to do so for at least the next 20 years.
Predictions are that e-paper will be cheaper than real paper.
Predictions are that by 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computation capability of the human brain. By 2023, when (today’s) first graders will be just 23 years old and beginning their (first) careers, it only will take a $1000.00 computer to exceed the capabilities of the human brain. And while predictions farther out than 15 years are hard to make, predictions are that by 2049 a $1000.00 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race.
What Does It All Mean? Shift Happens....... Now You Know... Karl Fisch
The world’s population will grow to 9 billion by 2050. To meet human nutritional needs over the next 40 years, global agriculture will have to supply as much food as has been produced during all of human history.
The pace of technological change accelerates with each new generation of discoveries and applications. Experience simultaneously reaches forward and backward and thus shapes the present. L. Dennis Higgins

I guess I am glad that I am already in my sixties and got to live most of my life in the 20th Century because it looks like the 21st Century is going to be rather chaotic - at least for this old guy....