The facts of the future . . . .

[Devils'Advocate]

Just because China and India have people with higher IQs than developed nations doesn't automatically mean that they will have the most power. Both countries will struggle to find water and food for their booming populations.

I think India has taken steps to control their population. For example, the tradition of aborting all females is now causing a crisis as men are finding it increasingly difficult to find a mate (which exasterbates the absolutely mind-numbing rate of child molestation).

I'm not all that worried about their society taking over any time soon.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by North East Goon

How can a computer be more advanced than the human brain, when human's are developing it?

How can a car's engine be faster than the man who designed it? How advanced a computer is compared to a human is apples and oranges. But computers have a capacity to learn themselves...at an exponential rate faster than a human being. It's inevitable.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

Just because China and India have people with higher IQs than developed nations doesn't automatically mean that they will have the most power. Both countries will struggle to find water and food for their booming populations.

I think India has taken steps to control their population. For example, the tradition of aborting all females is now causing a crisis as men are finding it increasingly difficult to find a mate (which exasterbates the absolutely mind-numbing rate of child molestation).

I'm not all that worried about their society taking over any time soon.

The presentation means that the individual smart people will be taking your jobs...either here or in their native countries when those jobs eventually get outsourced...not that they will be struggling to feed the not-so-smart people. This isn't political or societal, it's demographics of individuals with their own social mobility and sheer manpower.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

For myself, the flying car is the one that seems to be perpetually out there, from the 1960's through to the present . . . . . but where's my flying car? Another one is scramjet airliners to take you from New York to Tokyo in just a few hours.

To be fair, the distinction should be made about unrealistic futurism (flying cars) and those things that just turned out to be infeasible. Scramjet liners are old 60s available technology just not feasible either as a business, or even as something that people will tolerate flying over cities because of the sonic booms. Check out the closest thing, the failure of Concorde. People tend to find their way around problems with other solutions. You don't really need long international business travel of any great demand these days because of the internet.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

The presentation means that the individual smart people will be taking your jobs...either here or in their native countries when those jobs eventually get outsourced...not that they will be struggling to feed the not-so-smart people. This isn't political or societal, it's demographics of individuals with their own social mobility and sheer manpower.

If things are outsourced it will because they are willing to work for peanuts and we won't. Not because India has smarter, more educated, people than North America. There are millions of highly intelligent lower caste people with no access to education that will eek out a living at the local garbage dump looking for rotting food and eating fried rats for dinner. Demographics mean in an information world. They will have a billion people, not many of whom will get the education needed to be on the cutting edge of technology. Canada and the US have about 1/3 of a billion people, but 23% of our youth are getting university degrees. In India they have 1 Billion people, but 7% are going to university.

And thought this is purely anecdotal, I found that those that came to North America from India and studied here were some of the brightest programmers I've ever met. Those that went to university there and came here to work were some of the absolute worst. Maybe it's just the sample size, but it does leave me with doubts to the Indian education system.

[Daradon]

There have actualy been several models of flying cars, starting in the fifties. We just don't have the traffic infrastructure for them to be useful. Their pointless in the cities and for short distances.

And man, with the way some people drive, can you imagine if we allowed them to fly???!!!

Plus fuel and maintenance goes up exponetially. Just doesn't make sense.

Cool video though, makes you wonder with all the information flying around there like they said, why some people are so ill informed or at least so ignorant of the world around them.

I also think that the fact that we can rely on our machines and computers for so many things has made us completely stupid and useless in others.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

And thought this is purely anecdotal, I found that those that came to North America from India and studied here were some of the brightest programmers I've ever met. Those that went to university there and came here to work were some of the absolute worst. Maybe it's just the sample size, but it does leave me with doubts to the Indian education system.

I thought India had one of the most pretigious IT universities in the world...and that most of it's graduates are the CEOs and Presidents of many big American companies.

The people you meet probably couldn't make it into that University. It's more cutthroat and pretigious than MIT or so I saw from some documentary.

[iggypop]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I thought India had one of the most pretigious IT universities in the world...and that most of it's graduates are the CEOs and Presidents of many big American companies.

The people you meet probably couldn't make it into that University. It's more cutthroat and pretigious than MIT or so I saw from some documentary.

Yeah on that note, well sort of on a side note: I have two professors that are Indian, both unbelievable smart. Both have their respective PHD's and one of them, his father had a double PHD.

I think this shows how truly slack (for lack of a better word) our society is. When I think of most asians students in universities, they are very driven 'smart' individuals, and same goes for east indians. I dont believe that any of these individuals from other races are any smarter (hence the 'smart') than us, so why is it that most people from our culture don't have that same drive these individuals seem to have?