Did You Know?

Did you know…

• if you are ‘one in a million’ in China, there’s 1300 others just like you
• the 25% of the people with the highest IQs in China is more than the total population of North America
• China will soon become the largest English-speaking country in the world
• In roughly five minutes, 60 babies will be born in America; 244 in China; 351 in India
• According to U.S. Dept. of Labor, high school grads in America will have 10-14 different jobs—by age 38
• One out of four workers in America is working for a company for whom they have been employed by less than a year
• the top ten jobs in 2010 will not have existed in 2004
• we are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies not yet invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online
• there are over 106 million MySpace users (9/06); if MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th largest in the world (between Japan and Mexico)
• there are over 2.7 billion searches done on Google each month—to whom were these questions addressed before Google?
• the number of text messages sent and received each month are greater than the total population of the planet
• there are 540,00 words in the English language—5 times as many as during the era of Shakespeare
• today, a week’s worth of information found in the NY Times is more than was available during the lifetime of a person living in the 18th century
• it is estimated that 1.5 exabytes (1.5 x 10 to the 18th power) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year
• that number alone is more than all the information generated in the previous 5,000 years
• the amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years
• this means that for a student beginning a four year technical or college course of study, half of their education will be outdated by their third year of study
• it is estimated that by 2010, it will double every 72 hours
• 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 23 and beginning their new careers, it will only take a $1,000 computer to exceed the human brain’s capability
• by 2049, it will take a $1,000 computer to exceed the capabilites of the collective brain of the entire human race

Source: Cynthia Ware; see more in her highly informative video @ Digital Sanctuary