Yes they can! says Hans Rosling about low and middle income countries that, with economic and health progress, are catching up with high income countries – countries we used to call the western world.
Hint: Press the icon in the right bottom corner of the video window to see the video in fullscreen.
Hans Rosling's TEDTalks have been seen by millions. Tune in and see the talks from 2006 onwards:
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I love this video. It is inspiring, and I want to make some like it for my website.
great ideas, but need something more than just speaking about them
[...] February 2009 Hans Rosling has a new video over at Gapminder called “Yes they can!” It never ceases to amaze how much a few well-created visualizations can really explain. [...]
Great presentation ! Love how statistics can bring out such an insightful world view ! Excellent interpretation of the data too .
Those are some well-conceived, powerful impact graphics.
Does anyone here have an idea, how to make those animations? Are they made in Powerpoint? Flash? Dreamweaver? …?
Any ideas, any templates? Would be thankful for any pointers.
Regards,
Waqqas.
Paris, France.
Dear Waqqas,
I am glad to share some details on how the animations were made.
We encourage our users and viewers to make their own presentations based on the data and animation capacities of Gapminder World.
Here is a short how-to:
1) Select the indicators of your interest in Gapminder World.
2) Use a “Screen recording software” (search Google, plenty of choices for both PC & Mac) to capture the still image or animation.
From here you have a number of different options, depending on the “final platform of delivery”, i.e. web, lecture, interactive presentation etc.
(For the lecture in the video above, we imported videos into Adobe Flash, and created a menu to navigate between the different pre-recorded animations. We also overlayed the animations with circles and other visual elements to highlight important concepts.)
As a third step, you could for example:
3a) Export the graphics from your screen recording software. Import it as video into a presentation program of your choice (PowerPoint etc.).
3b) Narrate the graphics using your computers microphone and add it to a webpage.
In a near future, we hope to be able to provide more tools and guides for your presentations.
Suggestions and ideas are warmly welcome.
Very best regards.
Daniel
IT developer
Gapminder Foundation
http://www.facebook.com/inbox/readmessage.php?t=1006865266895&mbox_pos=0#/video/video.php?v=67244777246&ref=share
Hi Daniel,
We look forward to the tools and guides which are going to be incredibly useful. Had a quick question — Is there a way to set the background of the graph to be a point in time? It will be cool if I could set the background image to be the graph at (say) a time point of 2006. Kind of like how Rosling superimposes Sweden’s trip over time over current state of affairs in all countries.
thanks
Matt
Very impressive.
Why is this not supported by all politicians ?
What are our leaders doing instead of solving our most important issues ?
Let those with passion and knowledge lead the way.
They wouldn’t do it for the money.
Money means nothing to me. Therefore I’m untouchable and nobody and nothing could corrupt me.
But people like me would not get on the first step of the ladder.
Now you have already the answer for why we have our current state.
The presentation could have a different angle.
The problem is that the negative environmental impact of our way or level of living would be too great on the planet if all “developing” countries adapted it.
Economic growth is obviously great, but do not make the same mistakes environmentally as the “western” countries have, regarding sustainability, etc.
Poverty can be connected to ill use of natural resources.
First I thought the presentation was done with Spotfire. Worked with that when I studied gene data a couple of years ago on the university (http://spotfire.tibco.com/products/). You can change the graphic prestentation at real time. You can not add however some other overlayed animations.. that you should do still in the old way…
Btw.. marvellous presentation. Let us as high income countries develop a method of energy generation which will not produce carbon dioxide. Let us solve the problems involved harvesting solar energy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSMzKg6fwJ8) and using other fuels for transportation. Then we could do a favour for all of mankind and help the other low income countries as well giving them that technology.
[...] Hans Rosling makes a presentation here using the tool (it’s in English with a typical Swedish accent): http://www.gapminder.org/videos/yes-they-can/ [...]
Dear oh, dear… rich or “developed people”… Don’t U have grandchildren?
Advantage? Why? D’?!? Potential differences? Stay on higher potential position so many can flow?
Yes I agree… It is inspiring. But it worries me… is it possible? If capital owners will not get hands on the innovative and green technology and get profit form it… the chances that we will have grand-grand-children’s are pixels.
Sorry that I am pessimistic (realistic) but please inventors and investors… I be U hurry up. I am just a small ordinary person.
In god we trust ( and I am not religious person)
[...] highlights the sameness of the human experience. For an even more direct example, there’s Yes They Can!, which addresses his students’ assertion that “they can never live like us,” and [...]
Information like this is important and Gapminder does a great service in visualising it. It helps us understand that there is nothing at all unchangeable about world poverty, but does it motivates us to act? In 1800 Swedes helped Swedes and Britons helped Britons. Today if we really want to rapidly reduce preventable child mortality (around 150,000,000 between 2000 and 2015) then perhaps we need to think as humans helping humans. Does ‘yes we can’ makes more sense than ‘yes they can’?
I think Mr. Rosling is a great person and I suppose he’s a great professor. However he seems to be looking at things only from his specific point of view – that of a public health specialist.
The way of life in Scandinavia is not only result of the improvement in public health and getting richer. It was the RATE of the change (200 y = 10 generations) that played a significant role.
Gradually improving the economy eficiency, the education, the healthcare, generation after generation, alows you to maintain stable social structure because it doesn’t allow for great differences in lifestyle to appear between the different social groups.
Imagine now that you are living with a dollar a day in a village somewhere and overnight you become a millionaire. How do you think this will change you life? And imagine how such a change will affect the society you live in.
Thats what’s happening in developing countries now (of course it happened in most of the oil-rich countries but most of them are muslim and that is what kept their social structure stable).
The formation of new elites in the developing countries SO FAST is what will keep their people from reaching the standards of the Swedish society for example. Because when a bunch of guys who have a lot of money take the power in a country where a lot of the people a illiterate, they do everything they can to maintain their standard of living, do as little as possible to improve the standart of everyone else, and do nothing to educate the lower classes because after all people are needed for the dirty jobs as well (and no, technology won’t deprive society of dirty jobs).
Still, this is a great site and I wish you all the best!
The explanation is great. I really enjoyed the presentation. I also feel this perception can be applied to individual countries regarding their population as well as to the world regarding the countries/areas. I am sure even in Sweden there are people who are still living in the “1800′s” even if the country as a whole is in the “2000′s”. It worries me that the human race will always strive to be ‘the best’ and have ‘the best’ but do not see (or care about) the impact this is having on others or the planet. We do not have to look at the big picture to see this – just look around where you are now.
Great! I totally agree!
It is much easier to explaing to someone that already had all these things to reduce his/her consume, than to say someone that dreamed about something his/her whole life that he/she will never have this due to environmental change! I love this site…
But, I have a doubt… Is there any statistics that show what can happen to the world if in the next 10 years a great part of this people improve they standard of living?
Does anyone know where this presentation took place?
Professor, you know much much more than us students but we learned from college a fundamental thing and we can even process our brains to perceive that it’s way true that race and geographic location are two defining elements which decide whether ‘yes they can!’ or ‘no they absolutely can’t!’
[...] this Video Yes they can! Posted February 16, 2009 Swedish students say: “They can never live like us”Time to [...]
Hi
These are fabulous charts. What tool has been used to create these?
thanks
[...] Rosling, H. 2009. Yes They Can. Stockholm: Gapminder Foundation. Retrieved April 12, 2010. <http://www.gapminder.org/videos/yes-they-can/ [...]
Dear Douglas, such predictions are always very difficult to make. What we can say is that many people WILL increase their standard of living. We can also follow the trends in population growth and urbanization and see that the total population will grow mainly or only in urban areas, and that population growth will decrease in the future with declining fertility rate.
What effect these trends will have on “the world” as you ask, depends completely on how challenges are met and planned for.
/Staffan, Gapminder
In SVT’s (Swedish Television) main studio.