NOVELRESEARCH ...archive.worldmapper.org/articles/the_age.pdf · tractor. The Net In-Tourism map...
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NAA B08 By P. J. O’ROURKE Mapping a future for the world NOVEL RESEARCH When a political satirist decides to apply a new way of charting trends to help identify which nations will become the world’s leading innovators the results are, well, less than rigorous. LINK www.worldmapper.org A new way of seeing the world: Worldmapper is a collection of maps in which countries look fat or thin according to their share of whatever is being analysed, such as education, wealth, population. Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan). P REDICTING innovation is some- thing of a self-cancelling exercise: the most probable inno- vations are probably the least innovative. The history of humankind’s development can be summed up as the story of surprise. Adam Smith failed to forecast the Industrial Revolution despite his friendship with James Watt, inventor of the steam engine that powered it. And who would have prophesied MySpace or Oprah in quantities greater than 100mls? But even if we can’t see what innovations are around the corner, maybe we can at least predict what places are likely to be the most innovative in the future. An innovative tool called Worldmapper might help. Worldmapper was created by geographers from the University of Sheffield’s Social and Spatial Inequalities Research Group (There’s an innovative college major!) and by Mark Newman, a physicist at the University of Michigan. It allows them to turn all sorts of obscure statistical information into vivid pic- tures. Countries look skinny or fat according to their share of wealth or trade or popu- lation, but retain their familiar national boundary shapes. The results are often car- toonish, but nonetheless scientifically precise. Perhaps a decidedly unscientific tour through a few of Worldmapper’s more than 200 maps will help us see which coun- tries are best endowed with the stuff of future innovation. Mother is the necessity of invention No place can be innovative without children. This is not because of the platitudinous link between youth and creativity; the children’s art on my refrigerator suggests there isn’t any. Ben Franklin was no kid when he invented bifocals. Henry Ford, by all accounts, seems never to have been youth- ful. But countries with children, demographers predict, will have adults. India, China and the nations of Africa and South Asia are in the lead, as the Total Chil- dren map shows. Note, however, that there are adequate numbers of children elsewhere, even in supposedly child-proof Europe and Japan, and plenty in the United States. And not every child will grow up to be an innovative adult. Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact. What kind of woman is best at lovingly fostering the potential in children? Let us sidestep socio- logical, economic and feminist arguments and posit simply a woman who is herself beloved. Quantification of that is difficult, and Worldmapper hasn’t tried. But two of its maps, one almost the exact inverse of the other, are nonetheless telling: Women in Agriculture (the number of female farm labourers) and Tractors Working. It’s good when a society values women, not so good when it values women because they are cheaper than a John Deere. The US and Western Europe excel in the ratio of farm machinery to women farm workers. They also excel — as do Japan, South Korea, and South Africa — in another statistic: Female Managers. A country is more likely to be innovative when 100 per cent of its population, instead of 50 per cent, has an opportunity to innovate. Obviously innovative There is a kind of thinker known as a MOTO, a ‘‘Master of the Obvious’’. MOTOs are hired by the hundreds as editorial writers and news commentators. Though always boring, they aren’t always wrong. And it would be a violation of MOTO prin- ciples to ignore research and development as a predictor of innovation. In per capita R&D spending, the United States, the wealthier Western European nations, Israel, Japan, and South Korea are giants. In gross spending (see Total R&D Expenditures), China is Brobdingnagian enough, and Brazil and South Africa are mid-sized titans on otherwise rather unin- novative continents. But what are the researchers researching and the developers developing? Cold fusion or YouTube? A cure for malaria or flatulence? We can’t know the future worth of a country’s R&D. We can, however, inspect that country’s track record. The map of Royalties and License Fee Exports gives a picture of where past R&D has been valuable enough that other coun- tries buy it. Gangway for the United States of America! Sorry about that, Japan. Way to go, feisty runners-up Great Britain, Sweden, and France. A little education . . . Education is another MOTO indicator, albeit an occasionally dubious one. More years of education do not always yield more innovative thinking, as anyone who has suf- fered through a Harvard cocktail party can attest. Thomas Edison dropped out of school at seven. Whoever invented the wheel had no school out of which to drop. Socrates didn’t go to a university; he was one. Education, however, does change minds. And a new mentality is a more significant invention than the moldboard plow or the semiconductor. Not much was really invented during the Renaissance, if you don’t count modern civilisation. Currently, spending on education lines up about as you’d expect: rich countries spend more than poor ones. But for pur- poses of futurism, growth in educational spending may be more to the point. The Secondary Education Spending Growth map shows total increases for children aged 11 to 17 — the time kids start getting a mind of their own (necessary to innovation, however annoying it is to parents). Here the future seems to belong to Western Europe, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, China, Latin America, the northern and southern (but not the central) parts of Africa, and New Zealand. By comparison, America and Aus- tralia are idling or stalled. But another map, Primary Education Spending Growth, gives Yanks and Aussies some hope. Expenditures shown here include preschool programs. Some educators claim that that’s when the mind is truly formed. But do you want to hear the engin- eers building your high-speed particle accelerator say, ‘‘Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten’’? Blessed are the innovative in spirit Innovation is necessary to progress, and progress is, we tend to think, necessarily linked to prosperity. But if we look at the most innovative nation in history to date — the USA — we see that the most distinctive American innovations were the products of poverty. Bluegrass, gospel, jazz, rhythm and blues, country and western, rock’n’roll, and hip-hop are the music of poor people. American slang, American style, American fashions and fads have their sources among the least affluent. America’s car culture, teen culture, sports culture (and drug cul- ture and gun culture) were shaped by what, in other countries, would be called the lower classes. One secret to this sort of innovation is rich poor people. To be on the poverty threshold in the United States ($US9973 per year for a single adult) is to be richer than most people in the rest of the world (per capita global average GDP is $8229). A nation’s poor can’t be innovative if they’re famished. Famine takes too much time and energy. The other secret is what sociologists would call agglomeration and what we’d call a ghetto, inner city, or slum. Poor people are creative by themselves, but put a lot of them together and the result is brilliant — African-American artistic genius in the Har- lem Renaissance, Jewish intellectual genius on New York’s Lower East Side, Irish politi- cal genius among the ward heelers and block captains of Boston’s South End. Innovating with their feet The poor are an especially important resource for innovation when they have the bravery and pluck to get out of the poor places in which they’re living. Our species spread from Africa into the cradle of civilis- ation (a very messy crib at the moment). Mongols with nothing but a few horses to their name swept across Asia. Hungry mammoth-hunters migrated to America from one end of the Earth, and their gold- hungry cousins ‘‘discovered’’ it from the other. The results have been innovative in the extreme. The Net Immigration map gives a fairly predictable prediction of future innovation. People are moving to places that have the good life from places where life is not so good. The United States, Canada, Western Europe, Israel, and the posher and more peaceful areas of the Arabian Peninsula account for almost 80 per cent of the world’s net immigration. Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia are also gainers. And certain unprepossessing countries in even less prepossessing regions — Venezuela, Costa Rica, Russia, South Africa and Tanzania — are acquiring brave, plucky innovators. But other movements in human popu- lations are far less innovative. These are the waves of tourists. To be a tourist is to express rank conservatism. Tourists seek the ‘‘unspoiled’’. No one is as offended as a tourist when a warren of crumbling adobe is levelled to make way for a KFC or when a colourful peasant woman is replaced by a working tractor. The Net In-Tourism map shows places where visits from tourists exceed the tourist travel of the residents. Thus is sapped the innovative potential of France, Spain, Austria, Italy, Mexico, the Caribbean, south- ern Africa, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and China. Attitude-adjustment hour Given all the very rigorous research com- piled by Worldmapper, what totally unrigorous conclusions can we draw? A rough tally of quick impressions of arbitrarily chosen criteria indicates that only about a dozen countries or regions are likely to be innovative in the near future. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the United States and Europe loom largest. But South Korea and South Africa keep popping up strongly as well, and so do Japan, Australia, New Zea- land, and a few other places. All of which is mirrored, at least tolerably closely, by the Alcohol and Cigarette Imports map. That’s one more thing about innovation: it’s very stressful. And who, among the world’s innovators, are so stressed that they have to bring in stress relief from overseas? That would be the Americans, the Japanese, the Taiwanese, the South Koreans, and the Continentals in Western Europe. You folks look like you need a drink. Innovation is a damn big job. Congratulat- ions. Have a cigar. ATLANTIC MONTHLY P. J. O’Rourke is an American political satirist. Total population Net immigration Spending on research and development Spending on primary education Net inbound tourism Royalties and licence fee exports Spending on secondary education St.George Bank Limited ABN 92 055 513 070 AFS Licence No. 240997. 9624/7408 C01/07 16x4 St.George Bank is proud to be the principal sponsor of OpenAir Cinema, an exciting new event located on the banks of the Yarra, in the heart of Melbourne. After hosting OpenAir Cinema in Sydney for many years, we’re delighted to help bring this world class experience to Melbourne to enjoy from 1 February – 1 March 2007. Tickets can be purchased through stgeorgeopenair.com.au or by calling 1300 366 649. Ministerial Advisory Council of Senior Victorians Call For Nominations The Ministerial Advisory Council of Senior Victorians provides the Minister for Aged Care with advice on issues affecting the wellbeing of senior Victorians. The Department for Victorian Communities is now seeking nominations for appointment as members of the council. Members must be Victorian residents and will be expected to have the capacity to consult effectively, analyse issues and represent a wide range of views, including the needs of senior Victorians from diverse backgrounds. The Department is seeking to maintain a balance of experience and skills on the council and encourages seniors from rural and regional areas, culturally diverse backgrounds and Indigenous elders to nominate. Nominations are encouraged from seniors who can bring to the council varied life experiences, which may include different family and housing circumstances, health status, sexual orientation, occupation, income and education. Appointments to the Ministerial Advisory Council are for a three-year term. Members are appointed as individuals and not as representatives of specific organisations. More information, including council terms of reference, key selection criteria and a nomination form, is available from the website www.seniors.vic.gov.au or contact Heather Birch on 03 93208 3877, email [email protected] Nominations close on Tuesday 13 March 2007. D ep a r t m e n t for Victorian Communities mitch3504 A Master of Education is all about flexibility. Make a clear choice to tailor a program to suit your specific needs. Choose from a combination of flexible study options in a range of specialist pathways: Early Childhood, Gifted Education, Inclusive and Special Education, Information and Communication Technology, International Education, Leadership Policy and Change, Literacy Studies, Mathematics and Science, Music, TESOL, TESOL International, LOTE, Work and Learning Studies. Apply now for semester 1, 2007. For a copy of the postgraduate course guide 2007 telephone + 61 3 9905 2819 email [email protected] www.education.monash.edu Change your life course The getting of wisdom. As easy as a weekend subscription to The Age for just $3.00 a week. To save 23%, call 13 66 66 or visit theage.com.au/get *Terms and conditions apply. The Age Company Ltd., ABN 85 004 262 702. Source code: PAPR WISD 0406 8 Insight THE AGE . SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2007 theage.com.au
Transcript of NOVELRESEARCH ...archive.worldmapper.org/articles/the_age.pdf · tractor. The Net In-Tourism map...
NAA B08
By P. J. O’ROURKE
Mapping a future for the worldNOVEL RESEARCH When a political satirist decides to apply a new way of charting trends to helpidentify which nations will become the world’s leading innovators the results are, well, less than rigorous.
LINKwww.worldmapper.org
A new way of seeing the world:Worldmapper is a collection of maps inwhich countries look fat or thinaccording to their share of whatever isbeing analysed, such as education,wealth, population.
Copyright 2006 SASI Group (Universityof Sheffield) and Mark Newman(University of Michigan).
PREDICTING innovation is some-thing of a self-cancellingexercise: the most probable inno-vations are probably the leastinnovative. The history of
humankind’s development can be summedup as the story of surprise. Adam Smithfailed to forecast the Industrial Revolutiondespite his friendship with James Watt,inventor of the steam engine that poweredit. And who would have prophesied MySpaceor Oprah in quantities greater than 100mls?
But even if we can’t see what innovationsare around the corner, maybe we can atleast predict what places are likely to be themost innovative in the future. An innovativetool called Worldmapper might help.
Worldmapper was created by geographersfrom the University of Sheffield’s Social andSpatial Inequalities Research Group (There’san innovative college major!) and by MarkNewman, a physicist at the University ofMichigan. It allows them to turn all sorts ofobscure statistical information into vivid pic-tures. Countries look skinny or fat accordingto their share of wealth or trade or popu-lation, but retain their familiar nationalboundary shapes. The results are often car-toonish, but nonetheless scientificallyprecise. Perhaps a decidedly unscientifictour through a few of Worldmapper’s morethan 200 maps will help us see which coun-tries are best endowed with the stuff offuture innovation.
Mother is the necessity of inventionNo place can be innovative without children.This is not because of the platitudinous linkbetween youth and creativity; the children’sart on my refrigerator suggests there isn’tany. Ben Franklin was no kid when heinvented bifocals. Henry Ford, by allaccounts, seems never to have been youth-ful. But countries with children,demographers predict, will have adults.India, China and the nations of Africa andSouth Asia are in the lead, as the Total Chil-dren map shows. Note, however, that thereare adequate numbers of children elsewhere,even in supposedly child-proof Europe andJapan, and plenty in the United States. Andnot every child will grow up to be aninnovative adult.
Each child is biologically required to havea mother. Fatherhood is a well-regardedtheory, but motherhood is a fact. What kindof woman is best at lovingly fostering thepotential in children? Let us sidestep socio-logical, economic and feminist argumentsand posit simply a woman who is herselfbeloved. Quantification of that is difficult,and Worldmapper hasn’t tried. But two of itsmaps, one almost the exact inverse of theother, are nonetheless telling: Women inAgriculture (the number of female farmlabourers) and Tractors Working. It’s goodwhen a society values women, not so goodwhen it values women because they arecheaper than a John Deere.
The US and Western Europe excel in theratio of farm machinery to women farmworkers. They also excel — as do Japan,South Korea, and South Africa — in anotherstatistic: Female Managers. A country ismore likely to be innovative when 100 percent of its population, instead of 50 per cent,has an opportunity to innovate.
Obviously innovativeThere is a kind of thinker known as aMOTO, a ‘‘Master of the Obvious’’. MOTOsare hired by the hundreds as editorialwriters and news commentators. Thoughalways boring, they aren’t always wrong.And it would be a violation of MOTO prin-ciples to ignore research and developmentas a predictor of innovation.
In per capita R&D spending, the UnitedStates, the wealthier Western Europeannations, Israel, Japan, and South Korea aregiants. In gross spending (see Total R&DExpenditures), China is Brobdingnagianenough, and Brazil and South Africa are
mid-sized titans on otherwise rather unin-novative continents. But what are theresearchers researching and the developersdeveloping? Cold fusion or YouTube? A curefor malaria or flatulence? We can’t know thefuture worth of a country’s R&D. We can,however, inspect that country’s track record.The map of Royalties and License FeeExports gives a picture of where past R&Dhas been valuable enough that other coun-tries buy it. Gangway for the United States ofAmerica! Sorry about that, Japan. Way to go,feisty runners-up Great Britain, Sweden, andFrance.
A little education . . .Education is another MOTO indicator, albeitan occasionally dubious one. More years ofeducation do not always yield more
innovative thinking, as anyone who has suf-fered through a Harvard cocktail party canattest. Thomas Edison dropped out ofschool at seven. Whoever invented thewheel had no school out of which to drop.Socrates didn’t go to a university; he wasone.
Education, however, does change minds.And a new mentality is a more significantinvention than the moldboard plow or thesemiconductor. Not much was reallyinvented during the Renaissance, if youdon’t count modern civilisation.
Currently, spending on education linesup about as you’d expect: rich countriesspend more than poor ones. But for pur-poses of futurism, growth in educationalspending may be more to the point. TheSecondary Education Spending Growth map
shows total increases for children aged 11 to17 — the time kids start getting a mind oftheir own (necessary to innovation, howeverannoying it is to parents). Here the futureseems to belong to Western Europe, SouthKorea, Thailand, Malaysia, China, LatinAmerica, the northern and southern (butnot the central) parts of Africa, and NewZealand. By comparison, America and Aus-tralia are idling or stalled.
But another map, Primary EducationSpending Growth, gives Yanks and Aussiessome hope. Expenditures shown hereinclude preschool programs. Some educatorsclaim that that’s when the mind is trulyformed. But do you want to hear the engin-eers building your high-speed particleaccelerator say, ‘‘Everything I need to knowI learned in kindergarten’’?
Blessed are the innovative in spiritInnovation is necessary to progress, andprogress is, we tend to think, necessarilylinked to prosperity. But if we look at themost innovative nation in history to date —the USA — we see that the most distinctiveAmerican innovations were the products ofpoverty. Bluegrass, gospel, jazz, rhythm andblues, country and western, rock’n’roll, andhip-hop are the music of poor people.American slang, American style, Americanfashions and fads have their sources amongthe least affluent. America’s car culture,teen culture, sports culture (and drug cul-ture and gun culture) were shaped by what,in other countries, would be called the lowerclasses.
One secret to this sort of innovation isrich poor people. To be on the poverty
threshold in the United States ($US9973 peryear for a single adult) is to be richer thanmost people in the rest of the world (percapita global average GDP is $8229). Anation’s poor can’t be innovative if they’refamished. Famine takes too much time andenergy.
The other secret is what sociologistswould call agglomeration and what we’d calla ghetto, inner city, or slum. Poor peopleare creative by themselves, but put a lot ofthem together and the result is brilliant —African-American artistic genius in the Har-lem Renaissance, Jewish intellectual geniuson New York’s Lower East Side, Irish politi-cal genius among the ward heelers andblock captains of Boston’s South End.
Innovating with their feetThe poor are an especially importantresource for innovation when they have thebravery and pluck to get out of the poorplaces in which they’re living. Our speciesspread from Africa into the cradle of civilis-ation (a very messy crib at the moment).Mongols with nothing but a few horses totheir name swept across Asia. Hungrymammoth-hunters migrated to Americafrom one end of the Earth, and their gold-hungry cousins ‘‘discovered’’ it from theother. The results have been innovative inthe extreme.
The Net Immigration map gives a fairlypredictable prediction of future innovation.People are moving to places that have thegood life from places where life is not sogood. The United States, Canada, WesternEurope, Israel, and the posher and morepeaceful areas of the Arabian Peninsulaaccount for almost 80 per cent of the world’snet immigration. Hong Kong, Singapore andAustralia are also gainers.
And certain unprepossessing countries ineven less prepossessing regions —Venezuela, Costa Rica, Russia, South Africaand Tanzania — are acquiring brave, pluckyinnovators.
But other movements in human popu-lations are far less innovative. These are thewaves of tourists. To be a tourist is toexpress rank conservatism. Tourists seek the‘‘unspoiled’’.
No one is as offended as a tourist whena warren of crumbling adobe is levelled tomake way for a KFC or when a colourfulpeasant woman is replaced by a workingtractor. The Net In-Tourism map showsplaces where visits from tourists exceed thetourist travel of the residents. Thus is sappedthe innovative potential of France, Spain,Austria, Italy, Mexico, the Caribbean, south-ern Africa, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore,the United Arab Emirates, and China.
Attitude-adjustment hourGiven all the very rigorous research com-piled by Worldmapper, what totallyunrigorous conclusions can we draw? Arough tally of quick impressions of arbitrarilychosen criteria indicates that only about adozen countries or regions are likely to beinnovative in the near future. Perhapsunsurprisingly, the United States andEurope loom largest. But South Korea andSouth Africa keep popping up strongly aswell, and so do Japan, Australia, New Zea-land, and a few other places.
All of which is mirrored, at least tolerablyclosely, by the Alcohol and CigaretteImports map. That’s one more thing aboutinnovation: it’s very stressful. And who,among the world’s innovators, are sostressed that they have to bring in stressrelief from overseas? That would be theAmericans, the Japanese, the Taiwanese, theSouth Koreans, and the Continentals inWestern Europe.
You folks look like you need a drink.Innovation is a damn big job. Congratulat-ions. Have a cigar. ATLANTIC MONTHLY
P. J. O’Rourke is an American political satirist.
Total population
Net immigration
Spendingon researchanddevelopment
Spendingonprimaryeducation
Net inbound tourism
Royaltiesand licence feeexports
Spendingonsecondaryeducation
St.George Bank Limited ABN 92 055 513 070 AFS Licence No. 240997. 9624/7408 C01/07 16x4
St.George Bank is proud to be the principal sponsor of OpenAir Cinema, an excitingnew event located on the banks of the Yarra, in the heart of Melbourne.
After hosting OpenAir Cinema in Sydney for many years, we’re delighted to help bringthis world class experience to Melbourne to enjoyfrom 1 February – 1 March 2007.
Tickets can be purchased throughstgeorgeopenair.com.au or by calling 1300 366 649.
Ministerial Advisory Council of Senior VictoriansCall For NominationsThe Ministerial Advisory Council of Senior Victoriansprovides the Minister for Aged Care with advice onissues affecting the wellbeing of senior Victorians.
The Department for Victorian Communities is nowseeking nominations for appointment as members ofthe council. Members must be Victorian residents andwill be expected to have the capacity to consulteffectively, analyse issues and represent a wide rangeof views, including the needs of senior Victorians fromdiverse backgrounds.
The Department is seeking to maintain a balance ofexperience and skills on the council and encouragesseniors from rural and regional areas, culturally diversebackgrounds and Indigenous elders to nominate.
Nominations are encouraged from seniors who canbring to the council varied life experiences, which mayinclude different family and housing circumstances,health status, sexual orientation, occupation, incomeand education.
Appointments to the Ministerial Advisory Council are fora three-year term. Members are appointed as individualsand not as representatives of specific organisations.
More information, including council terms of reference,key selection criteria and a nomination form, isavailable from the website www.seniors.vic.gov.auor contact Heather Birch on 03 93208 3877,email [email protected]
Nominations close on Tuesday 13 March 2007.
Departm
entfor
Victorian
Communities
mitch3504
A Master of Education is all about flexibility. Make a clear choice to tailor a program to suit your specific needs. Choose from a combination of flexible study options in a range of specialist pathways:
Early Childhood, Gifted Education, Inclusive and Special Education, Information and Communication Technology, International Education, Leadership Policy and Change, Literacy Studies, Mathematics and Science, Music, TESOL, TESOL International, LOTE, Work and Learning Studies.
Apply now for semester 1, 2007.
For a copy of the postgraduate course guide 2007 telephone + 61 3 9905 2819 email [email protected]
Change your life course
The getting of wisdom.
As easy as a weekend subscription to The Age for just $3.00 a week.To save 23%, call 13 66 66 or visit theage.com.au/get
*Terms and conditions apply. The Age Company Ltd., ABN 85 004 262 702. Source code: PAPR WISD 0406
8 Insight THE AGE . SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2007theage.com.au
