A fun piece of information visualization: four great empires of the 19th and 20th centuries (British, Spanish, Portugese and French) are represented by coloured dots, the size of the dots representing that empire’s territorial extent. As the empires grow the dots bulge, but as we approach modernity there’s not nearly as much growth as there is dissolution, and the dots blister and then burst as territories achieve independence.
Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.
It’s attractive and strangely dramatic, if not particularly informative, and I don’t meant that as a terrible criticism. In fact, Pedro M. Cruz, the creator doesn’t consider it either a piece of information visualization or “information art. Either way sounds too pretentious — as the visuals are not very sophisticated or elegant, and the way that the information is treated doesn’t enable the extraction of advanced knowledge.” And I’m sure he’d know better than me.
Still kind of fun though!
(via kottke)