Ray Kurzweil wears a Mickey Mouse watch

I got to record and produce a podcast interview with Ray Kurzweil this afternoon. One of his main points was that most people don’t appreciate the exponential nature of technological advancement. Most change appears linear in the near term, but the linear model breaks down once the timeframe gets out beyond a few years. This brought me back again to my recent thinking about the next 10 years. The rate of change is going to be startling. (Did you see the story about the workers who got the RFID chip implants? Wow.) Can there be any doubt that within 10 years every student will have some kind of Internet-connected computing device with them every minute at school? What are we doing now to get ready?

And yes, Ray Kurzweil wears a Mickey Mouse watch.