Ingo Gunther is speaking as part of the “panel” I’m on at PUSH 2005 (it’s unclear whether the three of us will actually speak to one another, as we’re all running long…). He opens with some interesting statements about “the two big modernisms”: capitalism and communism, and his sense that “supercapitalism” has actually delivered quite a bit, as far as reducing poverty. His sense is that the more the future delivers, the less it’s embraced.
He’s got an extraordinary set of images from globes he’s built, visualizing interesting different sorts of data. One has nations marked with life expectancies, another distorts Japan into a continent to show it’s economic impact. THere’s a beautiful map that shows one with only international waters, another that shows only manmade borders.
They’re gorgeous, and extremely powerful. Looking forward to looking through them at length online – there’s 300 of them, and they’re blowing my mind. The best so far – a map where some countries have been replaced by the names of international corporations that have the same economic strength. Mongolia becomes Revlon, Kazakstan becomes Viacom…