Hans Rosling About Washing Machines – Oral Presentation

Hans Rosling presents washing machines as a modern invention related to the modern world. However, this is a starting to address more complex and more important global matters connected to poverty, environmental and climate change, economic growth, and injustice in the world. Rosling addresses the matter in the beginning in such an interesting way while he explains how the world’s population shares wealth and accordingly energy consumption through their use of many consumer appliances. He continues to explain that only a seventh of the world’s population consumes the most while the rest of the world struggles with quite smaller issues and live on significantly lower standards. 

Furthermore, Hans Rosling continues to explain his point of view by addressing the climate and environmental challenges that humanity faces in this regard. He precises how we should tackle those challenges until 2050. In the end, Hans Rosling shows his appreciation of the industrial world and industrialization that enabled us to do many things and as a positive phenomenon. In this context, he emphasizes the importance of wisely using the world’s resources to avoid further complications in the future and to solve existing problems. 

Washing machines are the starting point of Rosling’s speech as they facilitated life for many people around the world while this invention gave humanity extra time to develop. Rosling during his speech explained as well how rich countries benefited from these inventions and how poverty still characterizes other parts of the world that still struggles with basic issues. 

On an individual level, I benefited from washing machines although I never thought about it before listening to the speech. I am one among millions who benefited from this invention and, to an extent, I believe that they did not notice the significant change that these machines did to our lives. The matter is interesting because these machines facilitated for everyone, literally. Before I listened to the speech, I believed that washing machines are a natural part of everyone’s life and never thought about it as revolutionary. This is just because there has always been a washing machine since I was born and nobody around me referred to them as revolutionary or beneficial in this way as Rosling describes. However, Rosling’s speech gave me a different perspective to think about industrialization and how it changed the world on many levels, and mainly, how it even influenced my life. 

On the other hand, I now understand the matter of poverty and injustice in the world better. Rosling’s speech gives us a wider perspective on how to think in those matters and specifically, about which standards we have in our lives rather than just complaining about everything. The matter did not only influence people but rather changed the whole society and contributed to its development. Such an example is Swedish society which is highly industrialized and benefits from many modern inventions. The contrast of this image is the countries that were left behind during industrialization. The interesting matter in this context is the fact that there is nothing that is merely positive but rather a mix of positive and negative aspects and so is industrialization. It contributed to the development of the world and through our use of it, it had and still has negative consequences on the environment and other matters. 

Washing machines will develop further in the future. This is a fact that I am just convinced about. However, the matter is not merely about washing machines but rather about industrialization and global matters that everyone should care about.