Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Hans Rosling welcomes us to the Real Planet Earth

Perhaps the most amazing presentation given by a university professor I have ever attended and probably also the least dull considering the amount of data Hans Rosling of Karolinska Institutet presented. Having a presentation about the fact based realities of the world we live,which are more often than not in stark contrast with generally accepted "truths", in an event like Le Web 3 was definitely a good idea.



If you are interested in some notes from Hans Rosling's presentation, you can get them at this link, again made with Freedmind. Below are two videos:



  • the first shows a sequence of  Rosling's presentation in which he mocks the generally accepted idea that the world is divided into two sorts of countries (industrialized and under-developed, the first being characterized by small families and big life expectancy and the latter by small families and short life expectancy). The amazing presentation fo his data is done with a software tool developed by a new business called GapMinder (Rosling's family business of sorts);


  • the second is an interview of Rosling and I think it gives you an idea about the style and his exacting demand for a fact based world view. Actually he believes that instead of having international bodies like the UN publish tons of boring data that are only available for a fee, data should be made available freely and presented in a way making it easy for people to analyze it and draw conclusions. Rosling says data should be as free as sidewalks (which means we would need worldwide governance and a global tax system because in Sweden as elsewhere I guess it's taxpayers' money that pays for free sidewalks...)








No comments:

Post a Comment