People are consuming information at unprecedented rates across many platforms like social media, video sharing, coding, gaming, apps, and search. This hyper-connected world requires constantly studying, working smarter, and adapting faster than before. Simply being average is no longer enough to earn a comparable living. Meanwhile, incomes in the U.S. have stagnated while costs of tuition, living expenses, and inequality have grown significantly. More workers are becoming freelancers and defining success for themselves in this changing environment.

1. What’s Going On?
Dr. Michael Edmondson

3. Global Internet Rates
http://internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

4. Global Population Projections

5. Amount of Information
"Every two days we
create as much
information as we did
from the dawn of
civilization up until
2003 which amounts to
an estimated five
exabytes of data.“
former Google CEO Eric
Schmidt

6. 11.8 Hours Every Day
People in the U.S. are consuming information 11.8 hours every day, and they
are doing it in many different ways:

7. Photo Literacy
250 million photos uploaded onto Facebook every
day.

8. Video Literacy
48 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube.

9. Coding Literacy
Over 8,000 coding languages; new ones on the way.

10. Gaming Literacy
Expected to grow from $67 billion in 2012 to $82 billion
in 2017 with game playing in 70% of all households.

11. App Literacy
Between Apple and Android, over 1.5 million apps in
existence and this number is climbing rapidly.

12. Search Literacy

13. Hyper-connected
"Thanks to cloud computing, robotics, 3G wireless connectivity, Skype,
Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, the iPad, and cheap Internet-enabled
smartphones, the world has gone from connected to hyper-connected. This
is the single most important trend in the world today and why to get into
the middle class now, you have to study harder, work smarter and adapt
quicker than ever before.“ Thomas Friedman (August 13, 2011
New York Times)

14. Being Average Is Over
As Thomas Friedman
wrote in a January 25,
2012 New York Times
editorial: "Being average
just won't earn you what
it used to. Everyone
needs to find their
unique value
contribution that makes
them stand out in
whatever is their field of
employment. Average is
over."

17. Stagnant Incomes

18. Tuition v. Income Gap Grows

19. Grad Students & Food Stamps

20. U.S. Per Capita Income Trend
Year
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
Total
Inflation
2.10%
3.20%
1.60%
-0.40%
3.80%
2.80%
3.20%
3.40%
2.70%
2.30%
1.60%
2.80%
3.40%
32.50%

21. U.S. Personal/Household Income

22. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-worlds-85-richest-people-are-as-wealthy-as-the-poorest-3-billion/283206/

23. http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-en.pdf

24. http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-en.pdf

25. Free Agents Increasing

26. Your View of Success