We are living exponentially.

"Nintendo invested more than $140 million in research and development in 2002 alone. The US federal government spent less than half as much on research and innovation in education." This is astounding. To me, this correlates with Friedman's new middle. He claims that in the near future, with the new flattening of the world, that new jobs will be created for the middle class. According to Friedman, if I plan on teaching and keeping my job, I had better be able to teach, make school lunch, read announcements, mop up puke, drive the bus, write everyones curriculum and coach volleyball and the horseshoe team. I agree that technology is changing and that new jobs will be created, but I highly doubt to the extent that he thinks it will. To relate back to the original quote, it does show how the world is adapting to technological changes. Nintendo realizes that it needs to step up it's cash flow if it wants to avoid obsolesence.

"The 25% of people in China with the highest IQ is greater than the total population of North America." Well. It's a stereotype that Asian kids are better at math than most others students, but this is crazy. Now with the flatteners in place, the Chinese have the technology to stay up to date with the current technologies, not to mention the incredible work ethic and thirst for knowledge that most every country has except for the United States. I do agree with Friedman that if Americans are to stay current and competitive, we do need to have the ability to adapt and to become great explainers, because not everything can seen and understood immediately.

For ELA teachers to stay current with this technological boom that is happening in front of our eyes, we need to make sure our students are not becoming lackadaisical. Our students can no longer afford to spend entire marking periods on one book. I think about when I was in high school, even in my 12 AP English class, we would still spend weeks on a novel. In ENG 440, we read six of Shakespeare's plays that would have taken most of the year in grade school. There simply isn't room for complacent students in the job field today, especially for those students who actually have ambitions.