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What images do we see
from the rest of the world?
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We see natural disasters,
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war, terror.
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We see refugees
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and we see horrible diseases. Right?
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We see beautiful beaches,
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cute animals, beautiful nature,
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cultural rites and stuff.
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And then we're supposed to make
the connection in our head
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and create a worldview out of this.
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And how is that possible?
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I mean, the world seems so strange.
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And I don't think it is.
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I don't think the world
is that strange, actually.
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I've got an idea.
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So imagine the world as a street,
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where the poorest live on one end
and the richest on the other,
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and everyone in the world
lives on this street.
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You live there, I live there,
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and the neighbors we have
are the ones with the same income.
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People that live in the same block as me,
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they are from other countries,
other cultures, other religions.
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The street might look something like this.
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And I was curious.
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In Sweden where I live,
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I've been meeting quite a lot of students,
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and I wanted to know,
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where would they think
they belong on a street like this?
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So we changed these houses into people.
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So this is the seven billion people
that lives in the world.
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And just by living in Sweden,
most likely you belong there,
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which is the richest group. Right?
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But the students, when you ask them,
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they think they are in the middle.
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And how can you understand the world
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when you see all these
scary images from the world
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and you think you live in the middle
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while you're actually atop?
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Not very easy.
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So I sent out photographers
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to 264 homes in 50 countries
so far, still counting,
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and in each home, the photographers
take the same set of photos.
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They take the bed, the stove,
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the toys, and about 135 other things.
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So we have 40,000 images
or something at the moment,
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and it looks something like this.
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So here we see, it says on the top,
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families in the world by income,
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and we have the street
represented just beneath it,
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you can see.
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And then we see some
of the families we have visited,
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and we have the poorer to the left,
the richer to the right,
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and everybody else in between,
as the concept says.
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We can go down and see the different
families we have been to so far.
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Here, for instance, we have
a family in Zimbabwe,
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one in India, one in Russia,
and one in Mexico, for instance.
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So we can go around and look
at the families this way.
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But of course, we can choose
if we want to see some certain countries
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and compare them, or regions,
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or if we want to see other things.
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So let's go to the front doors
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and see what they look like.
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Go here, and this is the world
by front doors, ordered by income.
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And we can see the big difference
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from India, Philippines, China,
Ukraine, in these examples for instance.
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What if we go into the home?
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We can look at beds.
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This is what beds can look like.
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Doesn't look like the glossy magazines.
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Doesn't look like
the scary images in media.
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So remember that the students in Sweden,
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they thought they were
in the middle of the world income.
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So let's go there.
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We zoom in here by filtering
the street to the middle, like this,
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and then I ask the students,
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so is this what your bedroom looks like?
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And they would actually
not feel very at home.
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So we go down and see,
do they feel more at home here?
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And they would say, no, this is not
what a Swedish typical bedroom looks like.
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We go up here,
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and suddenly they feel sort of at home.
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And we can see here in this image,
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we see bedrooms in China, Netherlands,
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South Korea, France,
and the United States, for instance.
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So we can click here. If we want
to know more about the family,
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the home in which this bed stands,
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we can just click it
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and go to the family
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and we can see all the images
from that family.
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So we can go this way too.
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And of course, this is free
for anyone to use.
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So just go here, and please
add more images of course.
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My personal favorite that everyone
always tries to make me not show,
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I'm going to show you now,
and that's toilets,
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because you're not really allowed
to look at people's toilets,
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but now we can just do it, right?
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So here (Laughter)
we have a lot of toilets.
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They look pretty much
as we're used to, right?
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And they are in China, Netherlands,
United States, Nepal, and so forth,
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Ukraine, France.
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And they look pretty similar, right?
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But remember we are in the top.
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So what about checking all the toilets?
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Now it looks a bit different, don't it.
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So this way we can visually
browse through categories of imagery
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using photos as data.
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But not everything works as a photo.
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Sometimes it's easier
to understand what people do,
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so we also do video snippets
of everyday activities,
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such as washing hands, doing laundry,
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brushing teeth, and so on,
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and I'm going to show you
a short snippet of toothbrushing,
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and w'ere going to start at the top.
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So we see people brushing their teeth.
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Pretty interesting to see
the same type of plastic toothbrush
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is being used in all these places
in the same way, right?
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Some are more serious than others,
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but still the toothbrush is there,
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and then coming down to this poorer end,
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then we will see people
start using sticks,
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and they will sometimes
use their finger to brush their teeth.
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So this particular woman in Malawi,
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when she brushes her teeth,
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she scrapes some mud off from her wall
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and she mixes it with water,
and then she's brushing,
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so therefore in the Dollar Street material
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we have tagged this image
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not only as her wall, which it is,
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but also as her toothpaste,
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because that is also what she uses it for.
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So we can say, in the poorer
end of the street,
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you will use a stick or your finger,
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you come to the middle,
you will start using a toothbrush,
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and then you come up to the top
and you will start using one each,
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pretty nice, not sharing
a toothbrush with your grandma.
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And you can also look at some countries.
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Here we have the income
distribution within the US,
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most people in the middle.
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We have a family we visited
in the richer end, the Howards.
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We can see their home here.
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And we also visited a family
in the poorer end, down here,
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and then what we can do now
is that we can do instant comparisons
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of things in their homes.
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So let's look in their cutlery drawer.
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So observe the Hadleys,
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they have all their cutlery
in a green plastic box,
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and they have a few different types
and some of them are plastic,
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while the Howards,
they have this wooden drawer
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with small wooden compartments in it,
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and a section for each type of cutlery.
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We can add more families,
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and we can see kitchen sinks,
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or maybe living rooms.
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Of course, we can do
the same in other countries.
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So we go to China, we pick three families,
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we look at their houses,
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we can look at their sofas,
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we can look at their stoves,
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and when you see these stoves,
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I think it's obvious
that it's a stupid thing
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that we usually, when we
think about other countries,
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we think they have
a certain way of doing things.
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But look at these stoves,
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very different, right,
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because it depends
on what income level you have,
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how you're going to cook your food.
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But the cool thing is when
we start comparing across countries.
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So here we have China and the US,
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and see the big overlap
between these two.
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So we picked the two homes
we have already seen in these countries,
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the Wus and the Howards.
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Standing in their bedroom,
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pretty hard to tell which one is China
and which one is the US, right?
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Both have brown leather sofas,
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and they have similar play structures.
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Most likely both are made in China,
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so I mean that's not very strange,
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but that is similar.
(Laughter)
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We can of course go down
to the other end of the street,
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adding Nigeria.
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So let's compare two homes
in China and Nigeria.
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Looking at the family photos,
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they do not look like they have
a lot in common, do they,
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but start seeing their ceiling.
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They have a plastic shield and grass.
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They have the same kind of sofa,
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they store their grain in similar ways,
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they're going to have fish for dinner,
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and they're boiling their water
in identical ways.
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So if we would visit any of these homes,
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there's a huge risk
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that we would say that we know anything
about the specific way you do things
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in China or Nigeria,
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while looking at this, it's quite obvious,
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this is how you do things
on this income level.
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That is what you can see when you go
through the imagery in Dollar Street.
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So going back to the figures,
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the seven billion people of the world,
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now we're going to do a quick recap.
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We're going to look at comparisons
of things in the poorest group:
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beds,
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roofs,
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cooking.
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And observe, in all these comparisons,
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their homes are chosen
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so they are in completely
different places of the world,
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but what we see is pretty identical.
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So the poorest billion cooking
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would look somewhat
the same in these two places;
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you might not have shoes;
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eating, if you don't have a spoon;
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storing salt would be similar
whether you're in Asia or in Africa;
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and going to the toilet would be
pretty much the same experience
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whether you're in Nigeria or Nepal.
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In the middle, we have
a huge group of five billion,
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but here we can see you will have
electric light, most likely;
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you will no longer sleep on the floor;
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you will store your salt in a container;
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you will have more than one spoon;
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you will have more than one pen;
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the ceiling is no longer
leaking that much;
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you will have shoes;
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you might have a phone,
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toys, and produce waste.
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Coming to our group up here,
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similar shoes, Jordan, US,
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we have sofas, fruits, hairbrushes,
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bookshelves,
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toilet paper in Tanzania, Palestine,
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hard to distinguish
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if we would sit in US, Palestine,
or Tanzania from this one,
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Vietnam, Kenya, wardrobes, lamps,
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black dogs, floors, soap,
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laundry, clocks, computers,
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phones, and so on, right?
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So we have a lot of similarities
all over the world,
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and the images we see in media,
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they show us the world
is a very, very strange place,
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but when we look
at the Dollar Street images,
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they do not look like that.
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So using Dollar Street,
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we can use photos as data,
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and country stereotypes,
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they simply fall apart.
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So the person staring back at us
from the other side of the world
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actually looks quite a lot like you,
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and that implies both a call to action
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and a reason for hope.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)