Scale is a difficult dimension for society to grasp whether we are talking about national debt, geologic time, or global energy systems. Here at www.gregor.us I primarily use writing to disclose the fullness of scale, and am constantly aware of what a challenging task that can be. Over the years however I have conducted a kind of ongoing tour of visual displays of scale, to see how others are handling the problem. There is of course the classic short film by Charles and Ray Eames, Powers of Ten. Also, whenever someone clever comes along and creates a unit such as a Cubic Mile of Oil, I take note.
What’s clear is that the problem of using a two-dimensional form to illustrate scale, depth, time, and development remains a hurdle. This year I’ve found myself dipping into books by Edward Tufte to broaden my perspective in my own chart-making, and this past week I found a new book titled Diagram Graphics, which I’ve been studying. Let’s take a look at one example, below: a 1990 branching graphic of the various software programs that ran on Apple Computers, from MacLife Magazine:
When I see a diagram such as this, it opens up some compelling choices to those of us who chart energy use and supply. For example, China was very much in the news this week as it surpassed the US in energy consumption. But as I pointed out, the energy profiles of China and the US could not be more different with the US a big user of Oil, and China a colossal user of Coal. Accordingly, the more organic looking approach as seen here could be used to not only display China’s energy use profile, but each “branch” could be sized for thickness to show growth rates of oil, natural gas, hydro, and coal. By doing so, one could begin to approach better in a flat, two-dimensional form the richer aspects of a country’s development as it travels down the energy adoption path.
–Gregor
Photo: BNN of Japan designed graphic for MacLife Magazine, 1990 from Diagram Graphics by Abe and Nishioka.
