Tag: Science and technology

• The history of AI, stitched like the Bayeux Tapestry

  

  From Ada Lovelace to AI agents in 35 embroidered scenes: Turing’s curtain, two winters, a comet called attention, Will Smith eating spaghetti, glue on pizza, a king in a leather jacket and the band that was nobody. Scroll it sideways; every scene is sourced.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  art, Arts and culture, history, Present day, Science and technology, technology, Twentieth century, Victorian, World

• Up and down: every rocket launch since Sputnik, and where it all comes back

  

  I mapped all 7,416 orbital launch attempts since Sputnik from Jonathan McDowell’s catalogue. The world launched a record 329 in 2025, more than half by SpaceX, and half of everything ever catalogued has already fallen back.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Animated timeline, Present day, Science and technology, space, Space and astronomy, Twentieth century, World, world maps

• The Nobel brain drain: where laureates were born, and where they won

  

  I drew a line from birthplace to prize for 760 Nobel prizes in the sciences and economics. 31% went to someone working outside their birth country, the United States gained 131 more laureates than it grew, Germany’s share fell from 31% to 7% after 1933, and Japan became a late riser that keeps its laureates.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Birthplaces, Famous people, Flow map, history, Migration, population, Present day, Science and technology, technology, Twentieth century, Wikidata, World

• Where inventions came from

  

  I mapped the world’s inventions from the first stone tools to the web: farming began in 11 places, writing in 4, and the centre of invention moved from Mesopotamia to China, Europe and North America. The open record of it is 91% Europe and North America.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Data bias, history, Long view, Science and technology, technology, Wikidata, Wikipedia, World, world maps

• The internet’s seabed: every submarine cable, when it was laid, and the choke points

  

  608 cables on the sea floor carry the internet between continents. I mapped when each was laid, how Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft came to part-own 55% of the planned length, and the straits and beaches where dozens squeeze through together.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  coast and sea, Internet, Oceans, Present day, Science and technology, technology, World