The Parallel Bang (The explosive growth of human understanding in the 21st century)

BANG! Did you see it coming? More than six times as many college graduates are emerging this year than 100 years ago. Millions of them are coming, ready to solve today's problems. In the last decade, we've tripled our knowledge of astronomy, pinpointed the age and size of the universe, counted its galaxies, and found the theory that will link all known physics of the universe. We've found intriguing evidence that we are not alone. We've found ten times as many planets in around other star systems as we have found in our own solar system, and we know it's just the tip of the iceberg. We've decoded our genome. We've doubled our life expectancy. We've changed the workforce and the workweek. We've engineered machines a few atoms in size. From a standing start of zero percent of the US population in 1980 to 67% today, average citizens are now are wired to the internet, in communication with the rest of the world, keeping track of stocks and finding lost friends from decades past. The volume of digital data surpassed the volume of television and telephone data just a few years ago. Meanwhile, every word in every book in most of the world's libraries will be available online (and instantly searchable!) in just a few hundred more days, in every language.