[p2p-research] ulitmate anti-collapse video

[Dan Brickley]

On 2 January 2011 09:59, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> the subject-line is of course provocative,
>
>
> http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/12/22/wealth-and-health-of-200-countries-in-the-world-over-last-200-years.aspxis a must watch video
>
> what rossling shows is almost 200 years of uninterrupted progress in terms
> of poverty and health, and that the west and the global south are actually
> converging
>
> quite contrary to the usual narrative from some on the left
>

I love his work. One thing he does emphasise, and show very visually with
the gapminder tools in some presentations, ...is that you can break down big
regions ("Africa", "China") into subnational units. Sometimes it is useful
to compose a big picture from sweeping concepts like "Africa", other times
we learn more from looking at cities, nations, even smaller regions. The
important thing is to have the data in public shared space, and the tools
widely available so that every can explore their own re-presentation of the
raw materials.  And of course within a city or any population, there can be
huge inequalities. But we can celebrate the real progress of the last 200
years without being complacent, I'm sure.

For example, there was recently some fuss about fraud in Japan affecting
longevity stats there, where old age pensions were being collected by
families after death of the relative. See
http://abcnews.go.com/International/scandal-missing-100-year-olds-graying-japan/story?id=11393615&page=3....
 but if we have (a) the underlying data, attributed to its source (b)
our own access to the visualisation tools, then it's possible for others to
examine and explore the way those revelations affect the bigger picture.
That would work even in schools -- "OK, so how would this look, if we assume
that in Japan's figures...[insert statistical blabla here :]", then re-run
the visualization.


> rossling does not deny inequalities, but subsumes them under a broader
> narrative of social progress, and he stresses that even most laggard have
> very broadly progressed in health and life expectancy
>
> of course the great missing ingredient in here is the third axis of
> environmental externalities, resource depletion etc ..
>
> 2 questions:
>
> 1) are rosling figures sound?
>

I don't know for sure. My impression is yes, but that's anecdotal.


> 2) how would that third axis change the picture ....
>

I don't know that either. Good question.

But I do know that his GapMinder tools are available through Google now,
either as a 'widget' in the Google Spreadsheets system, or their
Visualization toolkit. Look for "Motion Chart" in
http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gallery.html :)

So the great thing here is we don't have to wait for another TV series to
find out, using equivalent visuals. We just need the best data we can get
our hands on. And for now, a Google account - the tools are freely available
but not opensource. Actually you don't need the google account except for
the Google spreadsheets stuff;
http://code.google.com/p/gwt-google-apis/wiki/VisualizationGettingStartedcan
be run on your own site (though it will I think load software from
google.com).

cheers,

Dan
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