"Did You Know?" Tracks Progress Of Information Technology (VIDEO)

Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod's "Shift Happens (Did You Know?)" series tracks the progression of globalization and information technology in a way that shows just how exponentially fast the world is changing. They put into perspective the age of information overload we're living in, in the hopes of helping us understand the future-- but the way they present it, it's hard enough to even wrap your mind around the present.

WATCH the video:

READ the video transcript:

DID YOU KNOW?

If you're one in a million in China...

...there are 1,300 people just like you

China will soon become the NUMBER ONE English speaking country in the world.

The 25% of India's population with the highest IQ's...

...is greater than the total population of the United States.

TRANSLATION: India has more honors kids than America has kids.

The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010...

...did not exist in 2004.

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don' yet exist...

using technologies that haven't been invented

in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet.

The US.. Department of Labor estimates that today's learner will have 10-14 jobs...

by the age of 38.

1 in 4 workers has been with their current employer for less than a year.

1 in 2 has been there less than five years.

1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online.

There are over 200 million registered users on MySpace.

If MySpace were a country it would be the 5th-largest in the world (between Indonesia and Brazil).

The #1 ranked country in Broadband Internet Penetration is Bermuda, #19 The United States, #22 Japan.

We are living in exponential times.

There are 31 Billion searches on Google every month.

In 2006, this number was 2.7 Blllion.

To whom were these questions addressed B.G.? (Before Google)

The first commercial text message was sent in December of 1992.

Today, the number of text messages sent and received everyday, exceeds the total population of the planet.

Years it took to reach a market audience of 50 million: Radio 38 years, TV 13 years, Internet 4 years, iPod 3 years, Facebook 2 years.

The number of internet devices in 1984 was 1000.

The number of internet devices in 1992 was 1,000,000.

The number of internet devices in 2008 is 1,000.000.000.

There are about 540,000 words in the English language...

about 5X as many as during Shakespeare's time.

It is estimated that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.

It is estimated that 4 exabytes (4.0x10^19) of unique information will be generated this year.

That is more than the previous 5,000 years.

The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years...

For students starting a 4 years technical degree this means that...

half of what they learn in the first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.

NTT Japan has successfully tested a fiber optic cable...that pushes 14 trillion bits per second down a single strand of fiber.

That is 2,660 CDs or 210 million phone calls every second.

It is currently tripling every six months and is expected to do so for the next 20 years.

By 2013, a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capabilities of the human brain.

Predictions are that by 2049, a $1000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the entire human species.

During the course of this presentation...67 babies were born in the US, 274 babies were born in China, 395 babies were born in India, and 694,000 songs were downloaded illegally.

SO WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Comments

[dolfen]

01:46 PM on 11/23/2009

We live in extraordinary times and the changes that are afoot will carry us and especially our children into uncharted territory as the evolution of our young species reclaims lost knowledge and acquires new as the elevation of consciousness accelerates and moves us towards citizenship of a universal kind.

Fasten your seat belts ladies and gentlemen and ready yourselves for the ride of your life.
Wow! R U ready.... ?????

[maguro 01]

08:24 AM on 11/23/2009

"For students starting a 4 years technical degree this means that...
half of what they learn in the first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study."

Nonsense. First year students study things like calculus which has been very useful for 200 years.

For keeping up with science at a Scientific American level there are more publications than ever. Much of the new knowledge we read about is beautiful. Today you can get more formal education and update on line. It's handy and inexpensive, and a good example for younger members of a household.

A problem in the US is our odd cultural devolution and decay of values. Confederates and fundamentalists will ruin us. What really put us in the science business, with a few distinguished exceptions, was refugees from Europe. Maybe we are just devolving to type which is unfortunate given our current debts and phenomenal consumption.

Making complex computers is not that intimidating. The best use of "artificial intelligence" is to augment human abilities. There is the risk of augmenting a psychopath. But what are the risks of creating new silicon and metal based species? AI will not do this soon; we would have to make robots to function in a primate society. Military funding for AI has skewed it in odd directions. The military wants hackproof autonomous weapons. Remote presence through 'smart' robots with human operators is more interesting for everything from the ocean floor to the moons of Jupiter.

[vorpalmusic]

09:40 AM on 11/23/2009

Pure AI would pretty much be psychopathic by definition too.

I think you are quibbling about the calculus thing though. Yes, there are fundamental sciences that are basically immutable, but the more technical the field, the more your basic knowledge is tied to technologies that change every few years. New software, new physical tools, etc.

[scottmcleod]

08:19 AM on 11/23/2009

FYI, this is Version 3. Version 4.0 and all previous versions are available at

http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/versions

Thanks!

[JackVandenBerg]

08:14 AM on 11/23/2009

We already have some hospital rooms in the Netherlands where the patient can change the wallpaper via a remote.

Built in electronic wallpapers in the room.

Do they have that in the USA also?

[bigsexyshaq]

06:41 AM on 11/23/2009

WARNING: This video (series of videos) is NOT for pessimists. I am one myself, and have watched them, and they are cringeworthy if you have a good understanding of how reality actually works.

[jrjones529]

02:51 AM on 11/23/2009

In the future your TV set will have a better picture than reality.

[AnnArky]

11:19 AM on 11/23/2009

but in the present your TV has become your reality.

[TexasGiant]

02:11 AM on 11/23/2009

"The 25% of India's population with the highest IQ's.....is greater than the total population of the United States. "

Even if India had 4 times the population of the US (it doesn't), the 25% of India's population with the lowest IQs would also be greater than the population of the US. Both the logic and the stat are bogus.

This is the same quality as the junk email that I get from new internet users, who seem to be the only ones gullible enough to believe it.

[RyKi]

04:59 AM on 11/23/2009

India has just under 4X the population of the US, its pretty close...

[poster1122]

11:34 AM on 11/23/2009

According to the World Bank, the population of India is 1.139 billion in 2008 and the US has 304 million. So they pretty much do have 4 times the population.

The point of that portion is that stat is what is the competition like out there. I graduated high school towards the top of my class. At the school that I went to for college, so did pretty much everybody else. As a result, I had to step up my game.

That's the point. Even if you're top 25%, there's 300 MILLION people in one country alone just like you.

[TexasGiant]

10:01 PM on 11/23/2009

"Even if you're top 25%, there's 300 MILLION people in one country alone just like you."

Yes, if you assume that India is the same as the US but four times larger. But it isn't. Poor and uneducated in the US is at an entirely different level than poor and uneducated in India.

By the same logic, there are about 7 billion people on the planet. That means that the top 5% of those people living outside the US are more numerous than the population of the US. So what? It's an irrelevant stat.

[StephenJK]

01:33 AM on 11/23/2009

As someone said the "singularity" is coming, soon. To put this in perspective, at some point in the relatively near future, there will be more change in 1 hour's time than there was in the preceeding 100,000 years or more. Technology will be so advanced that the brightest minds in today's world are incapable of imagining anything beyond the point of singularity.

[Schneb]

12:40 AM on 11/23/2009

This presentation is at least 2 years old--maybe the numbers have been updated, but the same comparisons were made in the original version. I saw it at the opening day ceremony of my school system, a year or so ago, and it had drawn fire at a previous school where it had been a featured presentation.

It may still be saying something worthwhile, but it's not exactly a burning hot, fresh, 'flash' news item.

And given the economic downturn and the election of Obama, etc. I'm not sure the message of 'we in the U.S. are about to be left behind as Chindia rolls on to imperial-super-power giant-ness stature' is as big a deal. Some of the predictions--about computing power in 2047 or whatever, look pretty far ahead, but there's no looking past China's rise to who'll come after China. Remembering how Japan was the rising power of the 1980s and now isn't, I'm wary of China being such a huge, unstoppable power. They may well be, but then again, if economic bubbles can burst, maybe rising-power bubbles can too.

I'm not sure the U.S. will be, or should be 'the' or even 'a' dominant player 50 years from now, but there's a hyperventilating feel to this presentation's 'we're all gonna die!' tone.

[bigsexyshaq]

06:42 AM on 11/23/2009

I understand exactly what you mean by that "we're all gonna die!" tone. I have been shown these videos in a class, and I do not find them inspiring, but rather, very depressing. Why do I need to be bombarded with all this generated optimism?

[Valkyrie Ice]

11:32 PM on 11/22/2009

The more people dismiss the fact that exponential change is occurring the more unprepared they will be when that change begins making it's hugest impacts.

Xerox has perfected printing electronic devices. Imagine a complete cellphone on a piece of paper, or cereal box with a video display, or a t-shirt with animated graphics. Electronics are about to change drastically from what we have known before. In a few years, we may be wallpapering our homes with video displays instead of static wallpaper.

Complete working human organs have also been created in the lab by a process of "printing". In just a few more years, it is probable that if someone needs a transplant, they will simply "print" one out using the patients own stem cells as a "donor"

In Vitro Meat, essentially cloning whatever part of a cow you want minus the rest of the cow, is also only a few years away. World hunger might be a thing of the past by the mid 20's.

Artificial prosthetics which connect directly to the nerves and allow a sense of "touch" are also in the labs right now.

100 core "network on a chip" processors are due out next year. That's 100 individual computers on 1 chip acting as a single processor - a supercomputer by 2000 standards.

Exponential change is happening. Denying it will not stop it from coming. The future is barreling at us like a freight train hauling the Titanic down a mountain on greased rails.

[JackVandenBerg]

08:14 AM on 11/23/2009

We already have some hospital rooms in the Netherlands where the patient can change the wallpaper via a remote.

Built in electronic wallpapers in the room.

Do they have that in the USA also?

[maguro 01]

08:42 AM on 11/23/2009

All that sounds interesting and fun. People will adapt to all those things quickly as though they had always been there. People with absolutely no understanding of science may fell intimidated but will use what they like anyway.

We are, however, the same old primates with the same old problems, divisions, and motives. One problem will be keeping some fanatic from doing virus design and nearly wiping out our species or half our food supply. What's to do about that?

[Adam Bomb]

11:01 PM on 11/22/2009

AMAZING time to be alive.

[vorpalmusic]

09:34 AM on 11/23/2009

Yes. Given the chance, I'd rather be born 100 years from now, but generally I agree.

[StephenJK]

07:40 AM on 11/27/2009

Who knows? You might just get your wish.

[foxisms]

10:20 PM on 11/22/2009

These facts and figures were originally viral email that was going around months ago.
Just another pronouncement of the death of investigative journalism, I suppose.
(In another story, paper news sales are down. Wonder why?)

[baomike]

09:58 PM on 11/22/2009

Fisch and McLeod had writer block.

[D-V-H]

09:39 PM on 11/22/2009

But the answer is 42.

[Vroomfondel]

01:56 AM on 11/23/2009

lmao. You nailed it. I demand that I am Vroomfondel.

[jasonfebery]

09:30 PM on 11/22/2009

Interesting. Hmm. Food for thought.

http://jasonfebery.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/not-just-a-theory/