I can only assume we all get way to many forwarded emails with a comment along the lines of, "this is the coolest thing you'll ever see." I must get 25-30 forwarded messages a week like this, keeping in mind I tell people (friends, co-workers, family) straight up I don't want them.
Well I got an email today with a link that was just stunning. Follow me below the fold and enjoy. I can pretty much assure you this six minute video will knock your socks off.*
*BTW: Sorry if I am slow on the uptake and everybody else has seen this before :).
This video really talks to two different issues that are interrelated and vital to the future of our nation, even more important then the war in Iraq. I think many or most of the people here will get the point of this video. But I don't think most of our elected leader do. And if I am right about this, and they don't, then we are in grave trouble as nation.
In fact, I think that is why the blog world went crazy when Senator Ted Stevens said:
Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially. [...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
We more then anybody realize that a man like this has no business making policy related to technology. Now on to the points I take away from this.
The first is the sheer size of the world's population and how other nations are growing at a much faster rate then the US. Although many of the individuals in these nations are poor and uneducated, the sheer numbers mean that even if a small percentage are educated, they will still out pace the United States in computer programmers and engineers. Think Friedman's The World is Flat.
The second is technology. I am a tech geek and work in the industry, and the sheer power of computing that we are going to see in the next decade is really hard to grasp.
In another life, for almost 15 years, I worked on the advertising/marketing account for AT&T's hardware division, which became Lucent, then Avaya.
Bell Labs was a part of that. Bell Labs invented the transistor, UNIX, C and C++, fiber optics, TDMA and CDMA (what runs our cell phones), and the laser. To a large extent it is Bell Labs that formed the foundation for all the technology we love today (great wikipedia article here).
I saw the "future" at Bell Labs on a few visits more then a decade ago, but I never thought many of those things would be a reality right now, this fast. I mean 12 to 15 years ago I could never have imagined I'd have a 5Mbps wireless network in my house that connects with three computers and my media server. A laptop with a 250GB hard drive and 5GB of RAM.
What will we have ten years from now?
It seems to me the growth of the world's population (millions educated) coupled with the rapid advances in technology means change 24/7! There is one frame in the film that says the Department of Commerce estimates that in the near future, when people reach the age of 38, they will have had between 10-14 jobs. Think about that for a few. Both my grandfathers had one. My dad two. I've had seven and I am 37. That change has happened in less then three generations.
It is both an exciting and scary time.
Now to bring in politics. There are two frames that scare the sh*t out of me. (1) The United States is 20th in the world in the percentage of broadband connections. (2) In 2002 Nintendo spent twice as much money on R&D as the U.S. federal government spent on education research. We better get our act together fast or if not while I am alive, while my children are alive, we are going to watch nation after nation pass us.
BTW: The music is from the The Last Of The Mohicans, Play the Kiss. If you like this, then you should also check out Loreena McKennitt. If you like celtic music she flat out rocks!