The art of explanation and the credit crisis

"Explainers" are important these days. That statement alone needs a solid explanation (hence the hyperlink).

Unfortunately in our information age, people are left behind when it comes to understanding complex ideas. This is why it is important (as the article to which I've linked above explains) to sometimes shift your focus from information to explanation. This is part of my job everyday: to translate "geekinese" to English, and explain the complexities that inherently come packaged with most technologies.

Our current credit crisis is very difficult to understand if you're not big into financial lingo. I've seen many different videos that attempted to explain our current credit crisis, but often came away more confused as to how home owners, lenders, bankers, brokers, and investors all fit together into this complex puzzle.

I stumbled upon a video (below) that does an outstanding job of explaining it in plain English. The creator, Jonathan Jarvis, completed this visualization as part of his thesis work in the Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.



The video is a little over ten minutes long, but does an outstanding job of keeping the viewer engaged by scaffolding their understanding throughout.