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KRISTIN SLOAN |
“Culture is the most important thing I would say. Because that is what brings joy to life. That’s the value of living.” - Hans Rosling at TED
I’ve had a bad cough/cold for almost two weeks now, so in an effort to help eradicate it for good, I pretty much spent the day on our couch. Doug left for Arizona at 4AM this morning, so I was unfortunately on my own in my loud foggy world (I’m glad he’ll finally be able to get some sleep tonight though!).
We got an AppleTV when it first came out, hoping it would be as amazing as almost every other Apple product we’ve been able to get our hands on, but unfortunately we were a bit disappointed (it’s possible, though, that we were expecting too much). The only thing we really use it for (rarely) is watching YouTube videos on a big screen (they actually don’t look so bad, and the searching and selecting interface is pretty good).
So today, I felt like I needed a little extra nerdy inspiration, and so I caught up on watching some of the videos of speakers at the yearly TED Conference. I was fortunate enough to come across this talk given by international health professor Hans Rowling, in which he uses his incredible graphing system to visualize statistics about the world, particularly analyzing data that can begin to help figure out how to pull people in developing countries out of poverty.
After showing his revealing Trendalyzer software (which was apparently bought by Google 10 days after this conference - you can play with it here!), he pulls up one simple powerpoint page (above), detailing and rating the MEANS and the GOALS for improving people’s lives. The conclusion was that while economic growth is the most effective means of development, culture is, in the end, the ultimate goal to strive for.
“It’s a cultural expression that for thousands of years has inspired human beings to think beyond the obvious.”
He then removes his shirt (exposing a muscle tank decorated with lightening bolts) and proceeds to demonstrate the ancient Indian tradition of sword swallowing, driving home his point (through culture!) that the seemingly impossible is possible.
Amazing. See for yourself…
