A teacher at Arapahoe High School here near Denver produced a powerpoint presentation for the faculty back in August of 2006. It has since become a small youtube hit, with many people sharing it. A friend of mine just emailed me a link to the video of the slideshow, asking for comments. Though I've long been an avid fan of the whole singularity / transhumanism / extropian outlook, I was surprised to find myself replying:

Blah, blah...transhumanism...blah, blah...singularity...blah, blah... technocalypse...any day now...

I mean, we're already living in the future. Where are the domed cities? And where is my damned jet pack? Can I get a refund?

Anyway, that stuff about how there are so gosh-darned many smart Chinese and Indians that they could eat our lunches and scarcely burp is pretty much crap. As these economies grow, they have their own needs to satisfy. If we project their standard of living upward, it is reasonable to assume that they will soon need the same percentage of technical people per capita that we do. In fact, there is already a shortage of technical talent in India, despite their churning out an alleged 600,000 freshly-minted engineers a year. Turns out that India, for example, is really only producing about 112,000 comparable engineers, versus 137,000 in the US. They have over three times the population of the US, requiring over three times as many engineers for their own needs, let alone satisfying the outsourcing demand of the rest of the developed world. But they produce fewer comparable engineers than us. Hence the shortage. As India gains affluence, they may outsource to us. And don't get me started on their infrastructure problems. Both India and China suffer from endemic corruption and a clan/caste sclerosis, and will continue to have a very difficult time forming the necessary social cohesion and frictionless markets needed to really reach their predicted potential. So unless our government is soon by of and for all Hispanics, I suspect the US and Europe will continue to set the standard by which other societies measure themselves, for many decades to come.

And that stuff about exponential accelerating change? I've been eagerly awaiting this singularity for the past 2 decades, and I don't know about you, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe it isn't going to come quite as quickly as the evangelists predict. In fact, as I spectate from my 50th lap around the sun, I'm starting to doubt that it's coming fast enough to save my increasingly wrinkled ass from the short and brutish fate that all men have shared till now. (Though I do plan to have my wrinkled ass frozen, just in case).

Okay, so is this me getting middle-age-cynical? Or just realistic?