Response to Rosling at TED

Hans Rosling presented quite an impressive multivariate, relational information graphic. (The sword swallowing wasn’t bad either!!)

The first trend I found interesting was that despite our economic growth, the United States falls short of less developed countries socially and in overall health. This reflects our country’s trend of valuing money and material success before everything else, including our own well-being. Rosling’s chart may be further proof that money can’t buy happiness. I wonder, too, though, if his “y” axis representing “mortality rate” is directly proportional to overall health of a nation? Or is this perhaps just his conjecture based on the new available data from the UN? His following personalization of the data with family names made it a little more clear and, of course, refreshed my memory of who in my family might have been affected during the time period he was discussing.

Rosling revisits the idea that money should not be a goal of a developing country in his final powerpoint slide, claiming culture supersedes all other factors, being the “value of living.”  I would like to hear him elaborate on this idea, which I feel was an important theme in our recent Design Dialogues lectures. That is, the idea that responsible design is going in a direction towards serving others and improving upon existing conditions rather than creating more “junk” just for the sake of producing something new. I felt Rosling’s message also to be one of empowerment, telling his colleagues that is within our means to share our knowledge with others and make the world more equal. I would also like to hear Rosling’s proposed solutions to help developing countries, being that the overall tone of his talk was very hopeful for the future. Was he commending Africa, for example, for coming as far as they have in the past fifty years by having the will to overcome great hardships, or because of all the humanitarian efforts that have not been in vain.  Perhaps he sees a combination of the two, which has been a good start and needs more momentum, awareness, and above all action to continue.