How Much Energy Will We Need By 2050?
2050: Redesigning Our Energy Future, presented by Shell in partnership with Discovery and Wired, is an hour-long television special that takes a look at the looming challenges the world faces over the next 40 years, as energy demands intensify while non-renewable energy resources continue to diminish. With an expected 2050 global population of nine billion people, most of whom will be living in vast megacities, it’s clear that pressure on the world’s resources creates daunting challenges for humanity.
But these difficult prospects also come with amazing opportunities, as individuals and communities explore what it will take to build a better future. 2050 will take a look at both the real challenges, as well as the people of today who are working to come up with innovative, viable solutions to create a more sustainable energy future for the world.
Market Maketh Man
This film is a brief analysis of the various models of liberal democratic theory, and how the concept of democratic rule became embedded in the shifting ideas of social equality, and increasingly dependant on the mechanism of capitalism.
This fun little infographic displays the results of a poll of 2000 individuals, showcasing what their bucketlists would look like if the world ended in 2012, based on the old Mayan myth. The most interesting phenomenon for me is that people, as you would have imagined, always mention they would like spend more time with family, discover the world or simply relax.
Why can’t bucketlists be actually implemented? It seems that because we constantly move, we are unable to stand still and, when given an ultimatum, we suddenly discover life’s brakepads. I would like to imagine that the next time this poll is taken, most individuals would say that they did everything they desired, within their means of accomplishment, and all that is left is plain destiny.
Do the dead outnumber the living?
Paul Higgins: People often get this wrong. The estimate here is that 107 Billion people have ever lived versus 7 billion alive today
Full Story: BBC
New City Influx Per Hour | Infographic
(via smartercities)
Young Women Go Back to School Instead of Work
Many economists initially thought that the shrinking labor force — which drove down November’s unemployment rate — was caused primarily by discouraged older workers giving up on the job market. Instead, many of the workers on the sidelines are young people upgrading their skills, which could portend something like the postwar economic boom, when millions of World War II veterans went to college through the G.I. Bill instead of immediately entering, and overwhelming, the job market.
Now, as was the case then, one sex is the primary beneficiary. Though young women in their late teens and early 20’s view today’s economic lull as an opportunity to upgrade their skills, their male counterparts are more likely to take whatever job they can find. The longer-term consequences, economists say, are that the next generation of women may have a significant advantage over their male counterparts, whose career options are already becoming constrained.
For now at least, many young women still feel that the deck is stacked against them.
Comparing Human Development of Countries through Star Plot Shapes
Worldshapin lets users study the interdependence of various factors such as health, carbon footprint, workplace equality, living standard, population and education across the world. Therefore, the project visualizes data taken from the Human Development Report 2011, and plots it on a stylized smoothed star plot. In effect, the world, continents and countries are represented as unique shapes based on how low or high they fare on 6 indicators.
(via sunfoundation)
A Visual Guide to US Income Distribution | Infographic
(via sunfoundation)
Robert Neuwirth: 1.8 billion people on the planet live in an economy outside legal spheres - an economy that grows faster that the regulated economy
Robert Neuwirth (PopTech 2011) tells us about life in the informal economy, what French culture classifies as System D. 1.8 billion people on the planet subsist through economic transactions that happen outside legal spheres and, by 2020, two thirds of our planet will be doing business in this domain. The future is the free market vs. the flea market.
This is also in line with some other megatrends (gigatrends?) which points out that power and influence moves from institutions to the individuals, who of course will do something about their situation if no one else does.
An interesting aspect of this is that Robert Neuwirth don’t mention the relation to the prosumer economy - an economy without money, but which creates and exchanges huge amount of value, and which is also probably growing much faster than than the regulated money economy.
(via emergentfutures)
Arabic fastest growing language on Twitter.
In October 2011, more than 2 million public messages were posted every day on Twitter in Arabic, from about 30 000 in July 2010, a study of 5.6 billion tweets reveals….The volume of Arabic messages has multiplied by 22 (+2 146%) in the last 12 months. Arabic is now the 8th most used language on Twitter, and Arabic messages represent 1.2% of all public tweets (2.2M per day). With recent events, Twitter has grown exceptionally fast in the Middle East. Although they are not part of the top 10 most used languages, Farsi (+350% in one year, but only 50K messages per day) and Turkish (+290%, 0.8% of all tweets) have also grown fast over the period.
Thai, the 9th most used language on Twitter, also increased significantly (+470% in one year).
Note worthily, Twitter’s website, translated into 17 languages, is not available in Thai nor Arabic yet.
(via socialcubix)
