August 26th, 2008 Posted in Politics, Statistics, media | No Comments »
Kids, before you get into this, blog go to http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/ In the archive list click on Hans Rosling and view his video on statistical presentations. There are some amazing possibilities with this type of statistical presentation.
It was my observation that in the 20Th century, most large scale problems were addressed by waiting for the crisis to occur before any substantive action was taken to correct the problem. Midway through the 20Th century many scientist began warning the world that the rate of growth in many areas was unsustainable. In 1970 a book called “Limits of Growth” showed graphs and projections of areas that they judged to be unsustainable. In 2000 these same scientist updated the book. Their projections, with the then primitive computing power were, on the whole, quite accurate. And they listed the unsustainable areas again.
No attempts to correct the rate of growth of these unsustainable areas had been made by the world in the 30 year period. In 2000 another book was written called “The Final Hour” on the scary consequences of ignoring these areas in the 21st century. Why Isn’t the world made aware of the potential crisis of unbridled growth in these areas? it appears that we can no longer wait for the crisis to occur … before we try to fix it. You can go back and find warnings by many scientist who are visual people and few dedicated journalist who are verbal people … but who was their audience? Just a small percentage of interested, mostly educated people?
Where are the leaders, the politicians, and the media who can reach the largest number of people? You can certainly put a lot of blame on the public who want to be entertained … not informed. Could it be that most of the TV media people and politicians … and lawyers, who bring information to vast majority of people, are verbal people? For example, Hillary exclaimed; “Oh no, not more Ross Perot graphs” when another candidate mentioned Perot’s name during the debate. (Sorry Hillary, Ross Perot has come out with the web site http://Perotcharts.com to put pressure on the candidates to get them out from behind the fantasy politics they are using).
Kids, “Picture worth a thousand words” is a very old Chinese saying. Actually verbal media people do understand the value of a one good emotional picture and it’s ability to sell a cause. The melting icebergs in Al Gores “An Inconvenient Truth” video were probably more compelling to the general public than his graphs and charts. Maybe we need a world wide TV organization that operates on a continuous measurable basis that can attract viewers like the weather channel and the stock market news does. A TV station that tracks the most significant issues and uses every trick in the world to entertain and inform the public using statistics like Hans Rosling’s moving data graphs.
When Hans went to the UN with his moving data graphics … He said “Good news! The UN told him his approach was no longer impossible. It was just that they couldn’t do it”. Well kids, lets hope some one figures out how to head off catastrophes before they happen. No one yet has figured how to get the media to present the really important data that is out there to the genral public.