I found this interesting post on another website:
Did you know?
Rise of a Super Power:
· 19th century was the rise of the British Empire
· 20th century was the rise of the U.S.
· 21st century will be the rise of China to a Super Power. Expected to surpass the U.S. within 25 years.
Facts on China:
· China is growing so fast that a city the size of Houston is being built each month!
· Of the 50 Nuclear power plants currently under construction worldwide, 30 are in China.
· One of the largest rivers in the world is the Yangsee River in China. It was damned at the beginning of this decade in order to control it for shipping. It won’t rise to its full operating depth until 2009. So much water is being contained scientist predict it will affect the rotational spin of the earth and the axis will tilt!
If you’re one in a million in China…
· There are 1,300 people just like you.
· In India, there are 1,100 people just like you.
· The 25% of the population of China with the highest IQs…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.
· 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…They would still have a labor surplus.
During the time you read this entire message…
· 60 babies will be born in the U.S.
· 244 babies will be born in China.
· 351 babies will be born in India.
Within the next 20 years:
· A U.S. college graduate in a technical field will have to leave the U.S. to get the top paying jobs
· It is estimated the two remaining U.S. automakers will be owned by foreign automakers.
· The Bank of Japan will be the most powerful bank in the world.
· The top super powers will be China, U.S., India, Russia, Japan, and Canada (Britain isn’t on the list).
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learners will have 10 to 14 jobs…by age 38
· 1 out of 4 workers today is working for a company for whom they have been employed less than 1 year.
· More than 1 out of 2 are working for a company for whom they have worked less than 5 years.
According to former Secretary of Education 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.
Did you know?
· The U.S. is 20th in the world in broadband Internet penetration (Luxembourg just passed us).
· Nintendo invested more than $140 million in research and development in 2002 alone. At the same time the U.S. federal government spent less than half as much on research and innovation in education.
· 1of every 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online.
There are over 106 million registered users of MySpace (as of September 2006).
· If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th-largest in the world (between Japan and Mexico). The average MySpace page is visited 30 times a day.
We are living in exponential times.
· There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month. To whom were these questions addressed B.G. (before Google)?
· 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 5 times as many as during Shakespeare’s time.
· More than 3,000 new books are published…daily.
· It is estimated that a week’s worth of 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 1.5 exabytes (1.5 x 10^18 (that’s 10 to the 18th power)) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year. That’s estimated to be more than the previous 5000 years.
· The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years.
· For students starting a four-year technical or college degree, this means that…half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their 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 1,900 CDs, or 150 million simultaneous phone calls, every second.
· It’s currently tripling about every 6 months and is expected to do so for at least the next 20 years.
· The fiber is already there. They’re just improving the switches on the ends, which means the marginal cost of these improvements is effectively $0.
· Predictions are that e-paper will be cheaper than real paper.
47 million laptops were shipped worldwide last year. The $100 laptop project is expected to ship between 50 to 100 million laptops to children in underdeveloped countries.
Predictions are that by 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computation capability of the human brain.
· By 2023, when 1st-graders will be just 23 years old and beginning their (first) careers…It will only take a $1,000 computer to exceed the capabilities of the human brain.
· And while technical predictions farther out than about 15 years are hard to make…Predictions are that by 2049 a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race.
