Nancy Cuppy
Senior Account Executive
We are living in a time where technology is not only hard to keep up with, but hard to predict. According to the former Secretary of Education, Richard Riley, the top ten jobs that will be in demand in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004. So in effect, we are currently preparing our students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t yet been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet!
The amount of technical information is doubling every 2 years. For students starting a four year technical or college degree, this means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their 3rd year of study.
Just five years ago, MySpace was launched as a social networking site and today there are over 110 million accounts with 4.5 billion page views to the site in one day. It has become one of the fastest growing websites of all times. To think of it this way, if MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th largest in the world (between Japan and Mexico).
We are living in exponential times. There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month. So, to whom did we address our questions before Google? The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet. Did you realize that you have learned how to read, write and interpret a new language through text messaging (SMS) emersion? (There exists over 900 chat, SMS, and IM abbreviations.) And it is estimated that a week’s worth of New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century. Have our brains really grown in size to absorb and retain this information?
Mind boggling isn’t it?
Without knowing what will be invented in the future, it is hard to predict what we will need to be knowledgeable about today in order to be equipped to handle what comes at us. Nevertheless, we must do our part each day to stay current. The health of our business and our own marketability is at stake.
So, what can we do?
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Subscribe to technical or industry-relevant blogs, RSS feeds, and e-newsletters. Spend 30 minutes per day reviewing this material and applying it to your business.
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Attend seminars on the latest trends in technology that are specific to your job function.
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Take advantage of free webinars. Many are available on-demand allowing you to view them when you have the time.
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Visit user generated content sites, such as
digg, to review the most popular headlines each day.
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History has shown us that whatever will come, will come at us fast and furious; so hold on for one wild ride. Stay active, stay alert and stay informed!