Please take a few minutes to watch this important short video.

[Fridays Child]

"Did You Know?"

Crew sent me a link to the video, this morning, and ElsewheresDaughter posted it at DU, back in February. But it didn't get the traction it deserves.

The producer is Karl Fisch, the director of technology at Arapahoe High School, in Centennial, Colorado. Mr. Fisch blogs here, where you'll find links to two more videos he has produced, "What If?" and "2020 Vision."

I wanted to recommend the ED's thread but that's prohibited, after a thread has been up for 24 hours. So, I figure this is the next best way to bring attention to the video. Anyway, I hope you all will take a look. It's definitely food for thought.

[Forkboy]

1. Wow

That was major mindfuck.

My head hurts. :)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. Great video. K&R

It makes me both happy and sad that I won't be around to see all that's coming.

"There is no safety in the cosmos." - Alan Watts

[Fridays Child]

3. Kicking.

[dave_p]

4. Severe misgivings

“The 25% of the population of China with the highest IQ’s is greater than the total population of North America”? That’s meaningless. All it says us that China has four times as many people as the US and Canada. Well here’s some more significant facts: In 1900 China had five and a half times as many people as North America. In 2100 it’s expected to have two and a half times as many people as North America. Their demographic lead isn’t growing, it’s narrowing.

“If you took every US job in the US today and shipped it to China, China would still have a labor surplus” Labor suplus? As defined by whom? This is plain alarmist. Are we saying we want Chinese workers unemployed? If this labor surplus is the worry, then let China’s economy grow and make sure that everyone else’s grows with it. And start by addressing why US median incomes and investment are stagnating amid a cash bonanza for the super-rich.

“60 babies will be born in the US. 244 will be born in China. 351 will be born in India” More alarmism. Notice we're not given the birth rates. China's is actually below America's. And India's is headed the same way. China’s population will stop growing by mid-century and India’s a couple of decades after. North America’s won’t. And with Europe’s population slumping, the US will increase its share among the most productive economies.

It's easy to paint the future as a source of terror: the GOP's shown the way.

But it's better to think of it as the time when we may finally solve some of the problems that plague us as a species, such as extremes of wealth and poverty determined by where you happen to be born, and resources so unequally spread that many can't tackle problems of environmental degradation. We have the resources, if we don't surrender them to selfish minorities as we've been doing since the 1980s. Fearing people worse off than ourselves doesn't help anybody but BushCo.

[Fridays Child]

5. Karl Fisch must have some reason for including it as a significant statistic.

I can't speak for him, though.

[Fridays Child]

6. Anoher kick

[Matsubara]

7. Sorry, I found it to be a pointless string of stats, some dubious with an overblown soundtrack.

Is this supposed to be some pro-globalist screed? There is the overinflated sense of importance that is belied by the utter lack of a point. Yes, we all know that China and India have a ton of people and that many of them are smart. Yeah, the UK was the shit in 1900. Whoopee, technological change has happened and is continuing to happen, and the job market sucks, but I guess the video is telling us we are wrong if we want to work fewer than 12 jobs by age 38?

That's the sense I get from this video, it's trying to say that those of us who still want to push for things like job security, protections for American industries and jobs, decent pay and benefits, etc. are just a bunch of luddites, because after all "Shift Happens", and if you're just clever enough to understand the immensity of the whole global technological revolution, why there will be nothing to worry about.

Either that, or there just isn't a point and the whole thing is bollocks.

[Fridays Child]

8. Wow.

If you really want to challenge the premise of the video, you might want to consider saying all of this to the person who produced it. I included his blog link, in the original post.

[Matsubara]

9. I did, in a bit more detail.

I wrote:

Sorry, I found it to be a pointless string of stats, some dubious with an overblown soundtrack.

Is this supposed to be some pro-globalist screed? There is the overinflated sense of importance that is belied by the utter lack of a point. Yes, we all know that China and India have a ton of people and that many of them are smart. Yeah, the UK was the shit in 1900. Whoopee, technological change has happened and is continuing to happen, and the job market sucks, but I guess the video is telling us we are wrong if we want to work fewer than 12 jobs by age 38?

That's the sense I get from this video, it's trying to say that those of us who still want to push for things like job security, protections for American industries and jobs, decent pay and benefits, etc. are just a bunch of luddites, because after all "Shift Happens", and if you're just clever enough to understand the immensity of the whole global technological revolution, why there will be nothing to worry about.

Is your point that the world is much more competitive, and we need to be better educated to adapt to the competition and new technologies? Why is something so obvious supposed to be so profound?

I'm more concerned with alleviating the massive negative effects globalization (use of overseas scabs) is having on everyday working people here in the states. What you're talking about may (or may not) benefit your teen students in the future job market they'll be entering, but will it keep them off the streets when their parents' jobs are offshored? How many of them already have second mortgages to pay for retraining for jobs that are being taken by cheap foreign labor?

There are a great many problems being caused by the global scab market that simply cannot be addressed by workers attaining more education every time they become obsolete.



I find that a lot of academics seem blissfully above the job market the rest of us have to deal with. All these haughty pronouncements about "new paradigms" that the REST of us have to deal with in real life every time the goddamn rug is pulled out from under us by these cutthroat companies.

I wonder what his response would be if GOP politicians start to get the populace behind abolishing tenure and laying off most public teachers in favor of Indian teachers via television who will work for a fraction of the cost? Somehow I doubt it would be so above-it-all if it was suddenly in his face like it is in the rest of our faces.

[mdmc]

10. kick

:kick: