Dec 1, 2008

The Future

Posted in Science at 1:00 pm by David Bradley -- 11 Comments; add your comment

Pundits are predicting that the first computer that will be at least as intelligent as a human will be built in 2010 and by 2049 a $1000 computer will outsmart the entire human race. But, this video is about more than that.

It tracks the shifts that are occurring today and extrapolates them into implications for those currently in high school and higher education. Think about it, if you start a technical degree this year, half of what you learn in that four-year course will be outdated before you reach the end of the third year. After all, it took radio 38 years to reach a 50 million audience, television 13 years, the internet 4 years, and Facebook achieved a market penetration that size in just 2 years.

In 1984, the year I started university, there were 1000 internet devices around the world (I certainly didn’t send an email till more than four years after that). By 1992, that number was 1,000,000. Today, there are at least a billion internet devices and that number will inevitably rise as people with at least one personal computer augment their connectivity with more and more mobile devices. Incidentally, you can get Sciencebase on your mobile here.

The video was produced by the zyOzy Foundation, which believes that the themes in the “Did You Know?” video are global in nature and apply to schools and children around the world.

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