Technobabble: Websites visualize social issues

You hear about causes and social issues all the time, often accompanied by dry statistics to help bolster a certain viewpoint. Many times, though, the information is meaningless without any easy way to grasp it. That's where these websites come in. They use a graphic-driven presentation to help visitors visualize what's at stake with the causes they espouse.

Adopt the Sky (www.adoptthesky.org)

Adopt the Sky is probably the best-looking online petition you'll see. Developed by Minneapolis agency space150 for the national Earthjustice Project, it seeks to raise awareness about air-quality issues. Asthma affects 4.5 million U.S. children, the site notes, contributing to 14 million missed school days each year. Minnesota alone has 76,202 children and 221,770 adults with asthma, according to the site. With only one week left before a court-ordered deadline, the site asks visitors to sign their name to a virtual petition to help urge the federal government to toughen standards for cleaner air. Signing your name involves adopting a square mile of sky over your state, joining 835 people who have done so to date in Minnesota. Your signature then becomes a floating point in a cloud-filled sky, which you can navigate to see people's signatures and comments, along with air-quality statistics and links for more information. (The site displays best on wide-screen monitors.) As Melissa C. wrote, "Do you and your family breathe the air? If so, can you truly ignore this?"

Superfund365 (www.superfund365.org)

What a waste. No, seriously -- that's the view of the new website Superfund365. Each day for the next year, it will visit one place in the Superfund, the federal program that cleans up the nation's worst hazardous-waste sites. Besides a text description and photos for each site, Superfund365 uses a Flash presentation to show how the place is contaminated, its Superfund history and the demographics in a 10-mile radius. Covering every toxic site would take more than three years, the website says, so it is selectively touring the country to bring attention to the problem and to the sobering fact that the Superfund program ran out of its allotted money three years ago. Superfund365 founder Brooke Singer says her website will hit Minnesota about eight months into the project, in April, including three sites in the Twin Cities.

Visualizing Economics (www.visualizingeconomics.com)

"I believe design can contribute to public debates by creating information-rich, easy-to-understand graphics revealing the meaning of data without hiding its complexity," Catherine Mulbrandon says. That's the goal of her 21-month-old website, Visualizing Economics, which has seen a surge in traffic recently after mentions on referral websites such as Reddit and Yahoo! Picks. Mulbrandon, an economist and "information architect," presents easy-to-understand maps and charts that focus on U.S. income and poverty levels. They make it easy to see how many Americans are poor and where they live. Minnesota fares relatively well, but one has to go only as far as South Dakota to find large swaths where more than 90 percent of the residents live in poverty. Mulbrandon recently started a series looking at the issue city by city.

Breathing Earth (www.breathingearth.net)

Breathing Earth was one of the first websites to use flashy graphics to publicize a social issue -- in this case, carbon-dioxide emissions. Created by David Bleja, the simulation juxtaposes country-by-country birth and death rates with the tons of carbon dioxide emitted in the world. The resulting star bursts and changing colors show how each nation contributes to climate change. It would be easier to admire if the reality behind the display weren't so sobering.

Gapminder (www.gapminder.org/video/talks)

Visualizing data to help understand social issues is the driving force behind Swedish statistician Hans Roslings' entire career. So he created a computer program called Gapminder to illustrate complex issues through inviting animated graphics filled with bubbles and colors. Videos of his lectures have become Internet sensations. In a dynamic presentation ("The Seemingly Impossible Is Possible") earlier this year at the annual TED conference, a gathering of the world's leading thinkers and doers, he used Gapminder to equate changes in health care among Japan, Sweden and the United States over the decades to a race among a Toyota, Volvo and Ford. It's engrossing stuff. Eventually, Gapminder aims to be available as a Web-based application that anyone can use to illustrate data, including social issues.

Randy A. Salas • 612-673-4542