100 people

[Doug Nelson]

I've no idea if this is true, but it sounds true, and I thought I'd share it:

"If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be nonwhite
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
1 would be near death; and 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education, and
1 would own a computer"

[studioj]

Very interesting, 6 of them will be very rich, but only one of them could have a computer

Kind of funny.

[byRo]

I remember seeing something like that before.
Now I looked it up (a.k.a. Googled) and found some sites with the same numbers.
Concidentally (not) the 1 computer gets shot down first.

This link (http://www.mysterra.org/webmag/coup-de-coeur_en.html ) seems to have a more believable list - at least on of the poor guys gets a computer this time.

[BORING STUFF]

OK, so here I go getting all serious on something that was supposed to be just cute (sorry guys 'n girls)

Seems that the numbers stem from a work of Donella H. Meadows (http://www.redrat.net/thoughts/global_village.htm) which dates from 1990.
Some other numbers may have changed in the last 16 years and, although it doesn't even appear on her list, the 1 computer owner from around 1990 may not have been that far off!

[/BORING STUFF]

Rô

[chris h]

I think sensible people use other peoples computers Doug!

[CJ Swartz]

Originally Posted by byRo

...
[BORING STUFF][INDENT]OK, so here I go getting all serious on something that was supposed to be just cute (sorry guys 'n girls) [/BORING STUFF] Rô

Not at all boring, Rô! Following your lead, I googled up links to pages including an artist's Flash visual presentations of "The Village" http://www.luccaco.com/miniatureearth/index.html

A similar, but not identical updated version of The Village:
http://www.odt.org/popvillage.htm

The Sustainability Institute, created by Donella Meadows, which includes archives of her writing -- including, under the HOPE section, "An Endangered Species Can Be Fun" http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive...=vn133beetleed

Links to sustainable food and systems thinking as a method of solving the problem of creating a sustainable food supply... I LOVE the internet, and I love Google!
Two basic principles underlying systems thinking are:
1) that an adjustment to one part of a system is apt to have more than one effect, and
2) that anticipating those multiple impacts is helpful in understanding a system and choosing a course of action to affect it.

Originally Posted by chris h

I think sensible people use other peoples computers Doug!