“The worldwide number of Internet users surpassed 1.59billion in 2008—up from only 2M+ in 1990, 45M in 1995 and 430M in 2000. Worldwide yearly increase in Internet users is 140M to 145M in the next five years, which means the 2B mark will happen in 2011 or 2012. Much of current and future Internet user growth is coming from populous countries—especially the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China. In the next decade many Internet users will be supplementing PC Internet usage with Smartphone, mobile phone and mobile device Internet usage. In developing countries many new Internet users will come from cell phone and Smartphone Internet usage. China now leads with over 235M Internet users at year-end 2008. The two most populous countries—China and India—are now in 1st and 3rd place in Internet users.” (more)

According to the CIA’ World Factbook there’s an estimated 6,79 billion people in the world (as of July 2009). So a little less than a quarter (23%) of the world population use Internet.

This is a woodblock print by Kunisada depicting a Scene from a Kabuki play (c. 1850). I scanned it from the excellent book The Nature of Photographs by Stephen Shore. Here’s Shore’s comments about the illustration:

“Japanese woodblock prints use the frame in a way that is more reminiscent of photographs than of Western painting. It has been suggested that it was a result of the Eastern scroll tradition ― seeing the infinitly variable croppings that occur when viewing a scroll as it rolled from hand to hand. Perhaps by examining what it gives these prints their sense of photographic framing we canclarify what photographic framing is.

Notice how, in the upper right of the picture, the frame gives emphasis to the angel’s hand staying the sword. The angel is described with the greatest economy: the artist has given the least information needed for us to read this being as an angel. There is something slyly wonderful about our ability to make an interpretation based on this minimal description.

Now, notice the leg jutting into the image from the lower right. It is really amazing that the artist chose to add this. It doesn’t relate to any of the action in the picture. It is entirely extraneous. It typifies the sort of seemingly arbitrary cropping that occurs when the frame of a photograph slices through the world. While it doesn’t relate to the unfolding drama of the picture, it does imply that this drama is a part of a larger world.”

From The Nature of Photographs, 2nd edition, New York: Phaidon, 2007, p. 64-64 (Amazon).

About Kunisada:

“Utagawa Kunisada (1786 - 1865) (also known as Utagawa Toyokuni III) was the most popular, prolific and financially successful designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints in 19th-century Japan. In his own time, his reputation far exceeded that of his contemporaries, Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi.” (Wikipedia)

Boston.com / The Big Picture: Earthquake in Haiti - A view of the badly damaged presidential palace - the center portion formerly 3 stories tall - after an earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on January 13, 2010. (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)

Eric Baker over at the Design Observer comments on this collection of travel posters : “In the interests of full disclosure, let me confess that I have long been a sucker for the golden age of travel posters. To me, they evoke a time, almost a century ago, when travel was actually exciting and adventurous, before metal detectors and security lines — and before you had to take your shoes off before boarding a plane. The British novelist Somerset Maugham produced some of his greatest literature during this period, stories filled with exotic characters — the plantation owners and aristocrats, not to mention the secret agents and scoundrels — that he met on his numerous trips to China, India and the Middle East. Indeed, to travel at that time was to engage in an activity that was, by all indications, considerably more civilized than it is today.” (read more)

“Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map grew out of an ambitious project in St. Dié, near Strasbourg, France, during the first decade of the sixteenth century, to document and update new geographic knowledge derived from the discoveries of the late fifteenth and the first years of the sixteenth centuries. Waldseemüller’s large world map was the most exciting product of that research effort, and included data gathered during Amerigo Vespucci’s voyages of 1501–1502 to the New World. Waldseemüller christened the new lands “America” in recognition of Vespucci ’s understanding that a new continent had been uncovered as a result of the voyages of Columbus and other explorers in the late fifteenth century. This is the only known surviving copy of the first printed edition of the map, which, it is believed, consisted of 1,000 copies.

Waldseemüller’s map supported Vespucci’s revolutionary concept by portraying the New World as a separate continent, which until then was unknown to the Europeans. It was the first map, printed or manuscript, to depict clearly a separate Western Hemisphere, with the Pacific as a separate ocean. The map represented a huge leap forward in knowledge, recognizing the newly found American landmass and forever changing the European understanding of a world divided into only three parts—Europe, Asia, and Africa.”

Mark Weaver is an Atlanta based graphic designer. Check his portofolio (Mark Weaver portofolio is running on the Cargo plateform). Buy his prints on Etsy. Read an interview with Mark over at diskursdisko.

Could be an interesting way to illustration Peter Sloterdijk’s Spheres trilogy.

9 0 0 0 photostream on FLickr: “life is this”.