Did you know…?
Thanks to Brady for sending me a link to a thought-provoking YouTube video created by a high-school teacher at the Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado. If you’ve got six minutes to spare click on the link below and ponder the implications:
Teacher Karl Fisch has scrupulously documented the sources for the video and the process he created it (in PowerPoint, natch) on his blog. The video was adapted by Scott McLeod.
As with all run-away successes on YouTube, it’s spawned a number of remixes (one nice mash-up ends with a clip from The Matrix).
I don’t have the skills or time to create a re-mix, but I do have a couple of thoughts to share.
One. The reference to Gilder’s Law 4:37 into the video, where the explosion in bandwidth is highlighted:
Third generation fiber optics has recently been separately tested by NEC and Alcatel . . .
That pushes 10 trillion bits per second down one strand of fiber.
That’s 1,900 CDs or 150 million simultaneous phone calls every second.
reminds me of Neal Stephenson’s prophetic words from the era before glass-fiber sharded the earth in circles of light:
The cable is carrying a lot of information back and forth between Hiro’s computer and the rest of the world. In order to transmit the same amount of information on paper, they would have to arrange for a 747 cargo freighter packed with telephone books and encyclopedias to power-dive into their unit every couple of minutes, forever.
p.20 Neal Stephenson, Snowcrash, 1992 (yes, 1992)
Two. The soundtrack took me back to the west coast of Clare, and old pubs where fiddlers love to play, imagining the text as one half of a conversation between two Irish lads nursing their pints of Guinness on a soft evening with the turf fire lazily warming their shins:
Did you know . . .
No, what, Pat?
Sometimes size does matter.
Get away, why’s that?
If you’re one in a million in China . . .
You’d find it hard to stand out in a crowd I’d imagine. It’s a terribly crowded place, China. So I understand…
There are 1,300 people just like you.
Get away. Imagine that. That’s very mathematical. Cases of mistaken identity must be fierce common.
In India, there are 1,100 people just like you
Really? Who’d have thought there were that many identical Chinese living in India? Do they clone them in Bangalore? Ah. Globalization, ’tis a wonderful thing. Your round?
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News just in that ‘Did you Know…’ is now repurposed as an Award Winning Powerpoint presentation and slideshow. Worth checking out.
By Ian on 05.09.07 11:38 am
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