(First, I think we'd all stop using TED lectures on this blog... if they weren't so damn good.)
According to Hans Rosling, the problem isn’t ignorance; it’s preconceived notions. Preconceived notions of the state of the world, of Us and Them, Developed and Third World. That’s why Rosling’s team has made its Gapminder program available to anyone with internet access.
Play around with it for a while. Follow your country’s development since 1975 in relation to the rest of the world. How has mortality rate in the Dominican Republic changed, along with its physicians per 1000 people? Perhaps more significantly, how has this changed compared to its neighbors Haiti, Cuba, and in Central America? Or in relation to African countries?
But is that last question even valid? For me, the most interesting part of his presentation is when he divides up three countries in Africa by 20% percentiles. The wealthiest 40% of Ugandans (a substantial portion of the population) live in roughly the same conditions and the poorest 40% of South Africans. Context changes everything.
Rosling admits that his program runs the risk of oversimplifying the world, using means and averages to describe millions of people at a time. The program isn’t perfect, of course, but if anything we already oversimplify the world ourselves. The Gapminder name is meant to remind us that the Gap between Us and Them isn’t so vast anymore, but the Gap between our conception of the world and its reality still is.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Minding the Gap
Labels: demographics, development, poverty
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3 comments:
I'm glad to see some reiteration of the problem with umbrella covering "Africa's problems".
Mkeka anyone?
Mkeka?! lol, this post is Mkeka Redux...or, i guess, Tridux...However, I am glad to see people really paying attention to the African umbrella, as Sama so eloquently and concisely put it. Knowing that all African Countries just can't be group together is the start of a wonderful future for all African peoples.
The idea behind Gapminder is simply to easily see how the world is, according to statistics at least, and not through our perceptions. The common perception of Africans as mostly poor people is one that Rosling uses is just one example. Another, and likely his most important point, is when he shows that there is a substantial middle-income class in the world... basically that humanity is no longer divided between a wealthy minority and despondent majority.
Yeah, the Mkeka post is similar, although it dealt with distinguishing African countries as different cultural entities, whereas what Rosling focuses on is more the economic differences (and, really, similarities) within and between all developing countries.
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