And while we have been seeing invention after breakthrough over and over in the last couple of decades, this next ten years is going to blow everything else out of the water.
With that said, learning Chinese is no harder than any other language. Studying Mandarin was a refreshing break after the terribly complex grammar of German and French.
His real breakthrough as a novelist came with 1980's desert, whose tale of a lost culture in the North African desert and a Europe seen through the eyes of immigrants won him a French Academy prize.
Those disconnections make it fanciful to suppose that the nascent dialogue between China and India will lead to rapid breakthroughs in economic co-operation.
Mr Obama's trip predictably failed to produce breakthroughs on either issue, though a lengthy joint statement outlined measures to step up co-operation on developing clean energy.
The breakthrough for research into intersexual selection came in the development of a new technique for investigating female response in the laboratory.
Born in 1916 in Petoskey, Michigan, Shannon showed an early talent for maths and for building gadgets, and made breakthroughs in the foundations of computer technology when still a student.