Newt (The Politician not the Amphibian)

I attended a conference this week at which Newt Gingrich was the Keynote Speaker. He was very good. Some of what he said, mainly about the environment and oil, I adamantly disagreed with him. However, his points on education, immigration and technology were reasonable in my view.

The most interesting thing he said, and I have no way to verify these assertions, was in regard to an impending technology explosion. Newt claimed that in the next 25 years technology will change 4 to 7 times faster than in the past 25 years.

His examples were: For us to understand the technology of 2033 would be equivalent to us explaining today's technology to folks in 1860's America. Cars, planes, phone, electricity, nuclear power, computers, TV, etc. didn't exist in those days. This is if the multiple is 4 times.

If the multiple is 7 times faster, for us to understand the technology of 2033 would be equivalent to us explaining today's technology to Sir Isaac Newton in the 1600's. Wow.

The technology is basically about computing power via the wireless world. Thus science and math become even more critical for us as a nation and ultimately the world. Another presenter at the conference asserted that 70% of math and science classes taught in U.S K-12 public schools are taught by non-mathematician and non-scientists.

This is totally unreasonable and very scary.