Why the web changes everything

This map shows the distribution of all people age 15-49 with HIV. The highest HIV prevalence was in Swaziland: almost four in every ten people were HIV positive. All ten territories with the highest prevalence of HIV are in central and southeastern Africa.

These innovative cartograms "were produced in a unique collaboration between the universities of Michigan in the U.S. and Sheffield."

Usually, countries on maps are defined by size. But these cartograms redraw the globe and resize countries according to new categories.


This map displays worldwide military spending in 2002: The US looks morbidly obese, taking up 45% of the world's land mass. The world spent $789 billion in 2002, the US alone $353 billion. Compare it to the war deaths map:


"In 2002, there were an estimated 172,000 war deaths worldwide, across 80 territories. The Democratic Republic of Congo (dark red) bore the brunt - 26 per cent - of the total figure.

Nine territories accounted for 70 per cent of all deaths. Burundi had the highest death rate owing to war at 1.2 people per thousand of the population."

Political issues are complex. They are filled with stats, numbers, comparisons, half-truths and even more stats. These maps might help cut through the clutter:
Before you saw the map, did you really know how bad the AIDS crisis was in Africa?
How can US politicians recommend increased military spending when the US already spends 45% of the worlds military budget?

A picture says more than 1,000 words. We know that. But this is just the beginning. If we could connect these high-level maps to real-life stories, we'd have a winner: If we could understand the severity of the AIDS problem in Swaziland on a personal basis, any reasonable person would support a major initiative to eradicate AIDS.(Imagine: 40% of the overall population in Swaziland has AIDS. 40%.)

As depressing and sad as these maps are, they should give us hope for a better and more global approach to the future.

But, we have to be careful. There's a fine line between the indifference of wisdom and the folly of enthusiam. I'm with Anatole France and prefer the folly of enthusiasm.

And to end on a less serious note:


Europe represents:

"The average Western European drinks over a third more alcohol than the average person in any other area on earth. In some places there is practically no alcohol consumption, which is why many Middle Eastern countries are not visible on this map.

Ugandans drink the most alcohol per adult, closely followed by Luxembourg, the Czech Republic and Ireland.

The map shows the proportion of worldwide alcohol drunk in 2001. It does not take population density into account, so some countries, such as Australia, are unexpectedly shrivelled, while Britain is particularly bloated even though we not in the top ten."

Cheers.

Brilliance, by mistake

An article in the New York Times describes the success of Sudoku that was drven by the creator forgetting registering the trademark in the US:

While no one knows how much revenue is generated by the global sudoku business, most agree it has easily topped $250 million over the last two years from an estimated 80 million devotees. The New York Times syndicate provides a variety of logic puzzles, including sudoku, kakuro and others, for newspapers and Web sites around the world.
Nikoli received only a sliver of that money. Mr. Kaji says his private company, with just 20 employees, had annual sales of about $4 million.
Sudoku’s popularity in the United States caught Mr. Kaji by such surprise that he did not try to get the trademark there until it was too late. As a result, Nikoli receives no royalties from sudoku-related sales overseas by other publishers.
In hindsight, though, he now thinks that oversight was a brilliant mistake. The fact that no one controlled sudoku’s intellectual property rights let the game’s popularity grow unfettered, Mr. Kaji says. Nikoli does not plan to trademark other new games, either, in hopes this will also help them take off.
“This openness is more in keeping with Nikoli’s open culture,” said Mr. Kaji, who sat on a sofa in his Tokyo office among pillows adorned with printed faces of racehorses. “We’re prolific because we do it for the love of games, not for the money.”