information aesthetics

this sounds a bit weird:

"predicted world population distribution in 2300 (134 trillion)."

currently world population is at 6.5 trillion/billion (giga) and conventional wisdom has it that it is never to double again, see e.g.

United Nations: WORLD POPULATION TO 2300
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf (page 1 print, page 15 pdf):

"In these projections, world population peaks at 9.22 billion in 2075. Population therefore grows slightly beyond the level of 8.92 billion projected for 2050 in the 2002 Revision, on which these projections are based. However, after reaching its maximum, world population declines slightly and then resumes increasing, slowly, to reach a level of 8.97 billion by 2300, not much different from the projected 2050 figure."

The Depopulation Problem by Phillip Longman (longnow seminars)

http://seminars.moose.cc/salt-0200408-longman/salt-0200408-longman.pdf

While it may be a nice visualisation, the data it relies on is a projection of status quo variables (everything will be the same as is today): "... if fertility levels remain unchanged at today's levels, world population would rise to 244 billion persons in 2150 and 134 trillion in 2300, clearly indicating that current levels of high fertility cannot continue indefinitely." Population Coalition, 2005" and this is scientificly nonsense to do.

If that map is supposed to show population size, then it needs drastic revision. South America, which has a population of at least 370 million, is shown as notably smaller than the United States, pop. 300 million. Africa, which has at least 750 million people, is shown as being a fraction the size of Europe. Back to the drawing board.