Watch 200 Years of Global Growth In 4 Minutes 270
kkleiner writes "A professor of international health in Sweden, Hans Rosling has a long history of exploring the facts and figures that surround our changing world. In the a segment of the BBC series, Rosling gives one of his most famous lectures with a new twist. Using 120,000+ bits of data and augmented reality, the exuberant professor takes us through the last 200 years of global history and its uneven growth of wealth and health." This is really worth watching. Seriously.
shows economics and politics over time (Score:5, Insightful)
He slows the presentation to show World War 1 and the Spanish Flu epidemic but he didn't mention the Cultural Revolution in China during the 60's when the large circle representing China takes a HUGE dive. Some analysis relating political/economic systems to this graph is needed. When Smith wrote An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Wealth of Nations, it was because the UK was the outlier in the top right of this graph. Now that a lot of countries are in that quadrant, it is worth noting the outliers are now the few remaining in the lower left. These are the countries whose political systems most interfere with market forces and prevent their citizens from being productive.
Amazing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Counter Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
...our growth is almost entirely based on the use of oil for transportation, new materials, pesticides, fertilizers, construction equipment, etc, etc, etc. It's going to be messy when it starts to run dry.
Huh, well, from my point of view, the growth is based more so on just pure unadulterated knowledge. Knowledge of how to make all the above work for us despite its evils. As we increase knowledge this only gets better. As time progresses, we get better at exchanging and persisting knowledge (we're doing it right now on glowing squares in front of us but we could be across the world). It will only get messy if we stop promoting science, medicine, learning, education, research, understanding, translation, tolerance, etc.
Just another optimistic spin to put back on the already staggering performance we've exhibited relatively recently.
Re:Counter Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
You both have a point, but sharing and using knowledge takes energy. Without the cheap energy of oil (or an alternative which has yet to take over) all that knowledge won't go very far or even last very long.
Re:Notice how there is little relevance (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have to invent their own medicine from scratch. The technology, once created, is easy to export. If one country finds a breakthrough in the field of medicine, agriculture, or communications, the world at large is enriched by it.
Sigh... graphs.... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about we look at this again but eliminate several typical graphing mistakes....
First, let's have all axes start at zero, not at, say, 33% of the range. This would immediately show that there is less disparity between average lifetime then the presenter attempts to make you perceive.
second let's have a non-logarithm axes for a typical unit that is thought of as linear... money.
Third, if we are going to compare wealth then we should be comparing amount of money held vs what it can buy, not just raw money per person. Sure people in the Congo have far less dollars per person than Japan. But a loaf of bread and the supplies they want to buy are far, far cheaper. In other words, it is possible for a smaller amount of currency from economy A to buy more goods and services in economy B. You need to account for this in determining "wealth". You can't just exchange currency rates to determine who is better off.
Lastly, You also have to dollar adjust for inflation even for specific countries over time. A typical mid-range american car in 2010 costs around US$25000; in 1977... US$5000. So, yes we might have more dollars per person in the US today but you're going to need 5 times as many dollars as you had 33 years ago in order to just break even.
And, while we are at it. I would get rid of the enthusiastic and "compelling" presentation acting. This is always a sign of attempting to market more than is really there. It is science through how the presenter can make you "feel" and it leads to poor knee-jerk decisions.
Re:Vaccine's role? (Score:3, Insightful)
the improvements to medical services to the general public shows right across the board from the turn of the 20th century, we can watch the rise of life expectancy. I bet the delta on that is huge in comparison to income
Re:Counter Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
when there's no more oil, it's back to horses.
I haven't heard of this, how does it work? Do they make some kind of liquefied paste out of the horses? Do some breeds contain more energy than others? So many questions.
Re:And... (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, Asia has been no less exploited and has managed to start catching up with the West despite of that.
Re:And... (Score:4, Insightful)
Africa needs to stop acting like children.
For the most part in America and Europe, race isn't as big of a factor. I'm not saying that racism is gone. But unlike ages ago there isn't "Irish" vs "Italian", they're all 'white'. In Africa entire cultures are brutally raped, mangled and murdered because of a small genetic variation of nose or ear size. The world maybe learned something from Hitler.
You have health care information such as "Rape a virgin and cure your HIV." Warlords and Presidents accumulating wealth that makes our overpaid CEOs look like chump change.
Then you have warlords taking over working farms from "white" farmers. Kicking them out of the country, scrapping all of the irrigation for a cheap buck and wondering why people are now starving.
Re:Amazing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hans Rosling is great at that. His amazing visualizations (he's done variations of this talk at a number of TED conferences and for the State department and so on) really do put things in perspective that in fact things have gotten MUCH better over all, they continue to get better, and with effort and creativity (as is always required) we can look forward to an even better future.
People like him and Saul Griffith and David Desutch are people I think that really need more media attention, that people need to listen to. People who actually analyze the data, who do extremely complex and in-depth analysis, and who can then help show that no, we aren't all fucked, life isn't horrible and we aren't all going to die just because there are problems. There are challenges yes, but things are getting better, and we can overcome those challenges and make things better still. For that matter, those challenges are also opportunities for new jobs and so on.
Hopefully the BBC's new version of his presentation will help more people become aware of it and understand: Thing were not better in the past, they are better now. We need to look towards a better and brighter future, not back to some imaginary perfect past.
Re:I saw this (Score:4, Insightful)
It was important in 1810. Babies mean future hunters, gatherers, farm labor for the tribe or family.
While being a screaming poop factory for a couple years, by age 4 a child could be tasked with simple gathering, clean up and food/tool preparation. By age 6-7 a child could be killing vermin, small animal hunting and other near adult, gender specific chores.
By age 10 a male child would be supporting hunting, fishing and farming and by 12 actively taking part in hunts, farming or by the mid 1800s industrial work.
Loss of a child on the American Frontier, the sub-arctic or in tribal societies was a huge loss of food, energy and future growth.
Re:Nice Sig... (Score:5, Insightful)
So what will you call it when global production peaks?
A transition from oil to renewable energy. Oil production will peak from traditional sources, because renewable energy prices will crash through the floor, and production will soar.
What, iron? We have that. It isn't economically viable. And it will never produce enough liquid fuel to provide for the level of transportation we currently enjoy.
Then why does south africa use it for their diesel? Because it is.
You realize that coal will peak also, and isn't unlimited?
Because you can feed waste biomass into the system, like sewage, trash, and wood scrap. This already happening in Africa.
Population grows exponentially.
Paul Erlich, Tomas Malthus and the members of the flat earth society still believe this. The problem is that it is false, because captalism = wealth = less population growth. India, China, the USA, all have zero or rapidly zeroing population growth rate.
"Affluence" will peak once we reach the limit of exploitable resources on Earth.
Actually it will stop because people are starting to get satisfied with the amount of stuff they have. Once you have a house and an SUV, and maybe a motor home, what else do you want?
"Technology level" (whatever that means exactly) will peak given a large enough supply-shock to send researchers heading for the hills.
Because population growth will stop, innovation will stop the shortages, and wealth will grow, this just won't happen.
You do the math.
I did the math. Now let's see some math from the Malthus flat earth society, who's basic core fact (exponential population growth) is utterly wrong.