Sourcemap for a Laptop Computer, by Leo Bonanni

Where did your shoes come from? Your coffee? Your laptop? One of the beautiful things about the modern world is that you can hold a piece of technology in your hands–or wear it on your feet–without having to know the answer to this question.

As anyone who has read or heard “I, Pencil” knows, the genealogies of even the most banal products are immensely complicated. The punch line of that story is that pencils have too many components for one person to make or even fully understand, but through innovations like the price system they can be produced without central planning. In the author’s words, the moral is to “Leave all creative energies uninhibited.”

On today’s nerd fun site, Sourcemap, you can see cool visualizations of where all kinds of things come from. The maps for pencils are probably a little oversimplified, but some others are really neat, like the ones at the beginning of the post. My favorite are the food sourcemaps–check out Tropicana, Chicken of the Sea tuna, and Nutella. Now you knowl.