The power of images: When mankind recognised spaceship earth

David Lee

10.7.2019

Translation: machine translated

The moon landing is considered the greatest milestone in space travel. What is somewhat forgotten is how important it was for people to get an overall view of their own planet for the first time. The image of "Spaceship Earth" emerged in people's minds.

The 50th anniversary of the first moon landing on 21 July is currently on everyone's lips again. But space travel in the 1960s and early 1970s brought with it another milestone that was possibly even more important for people's consciousness: the first photos of planet Earth.

Take yourself back to 1965: a world without the internet, digital photography and computer graphics. Every photo cost money and had to be developed first, and the film was full after just a few pictures. Compared to today, there were extremely few photos and photorealistic graphics.

What did exist, however, was mass media: television, newspapers, magazines. Relatively few photos and relatively good distribution options - this combination meant that a single photo had a much greater impact back then than it does today. Photographs also had an extremely high level of credibility, as they were very difficult to manipulate compared to today.

The planet recognises itself

On 20 September 1967, the DODGE satellite took the first colour photograph showing the globe fully illuminated. The quality is still very unsatisfactory. A TV camera took three photos, each with a colour filter (red, green, blue), which were then combined to form a colour image. The red round thing below is a colour chart.

The picture was printed in the magazine "Life" on 10 November 1967. On that very day, NASA's ATS-3 satellite took a much better photo of Earth.

This photo ended up on the cover of the first "Whole Earth Catalog" from autumn 1968, and this print had a much bigger impact than the picture in "Life" magazine. Steve Jobs used his slogan "Stay hungry. Stay foolish." from the Whole Earth Catalog and, looking back, described it as "Google in paper form" and the "Bible of my generation". The magazine was little more than a collection of carefully selected tools for do-it-yourself, self-sufficiency and sustainability. To understand its success, you have to visualise the zeitgeist of 1968.

Awareness: We are all one

In 1968, the world was divided in two by the Cold War. Society was also divided: Into the young and the old generation, who had very different goals and ideas. In the USA, there were also whites and blacks. The signs were pointing to war and riots.

The hippie movement was a counter-reaction to these conditions. A photo of the globe aptly summarises the core idea of the hippie movement. Because the picture shows: We all live on the same planet. We are in the same boat. If we destroy parts of this planet, we also destroy ourselves. This results in demands such as environmental protection, sustainability and careful use of resources. The Earth as a spaceship with limited resources - this idea became firmly anchored in people's minds.

The peace movement can also be symbolised by the globe: All people are connected. There is no first, second or third world.

This feeling of connectedness was fuelled by the drug LSD, without which the entire psychedelic culture would have been unthinkable. For many users, LSD removes the clear boundaries between the self and the rest of the world - at the same time, perception is not clouded, but rather expanded. It creates the impression of a universal realisation. This also symbolises the image of the Blue Planet perfectly.

Steward Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, managed to combine and disseminate the ideas circulating in 1968. He was involved in a wide variety of exciting events. Among other things, he was involved in the LSD movement Merry Pranksters and helped with the legendary "Mother of all demos". At this computer demonstration by Douglas Engelbart, concepts such as computer mice, word processing, Copy Paste, hyperlinks and even real-time collaboration and video conferencing were demonstrated as early as 1968. Engelbart was so far ahead of his time that his contemporaries failed to recognise the potential of his ideas.

Steward Brand didn't just use the photo of our planet because it was available at the time. As early as 1966, he launched a campaign to demand a photo of "the whole Earth" from NASA.

The better, the more impressive

As a result, more and better photos were taken showing the entire globe. The most famous one was from the last Apollo flight in 1972 and even has a name: Blue Marble. It was taken with a Hasselblad medium format camera. Clearly, the more beautiful the images of our Earth, the greater the impact that Stewart Brand intended with his Whole Earth movement.

This image was also used intensively for the environmental and peace movement. The study "The Limits to Growth", which scientifically substantiated the problems of exponential growth and brought about a rethink, also dates from 1972.

Of course, seeing the Earth in real life from space is even more impressive than any photo. In the short documentary "The Overview Effect", astronauts talk about how this experience shaped them.

David Lee

Senior Editor

David.Lee@digitecgalaxus.ch

My interest in IT and writing landed me in tech journalism early on (2000). I want to know how we can use technology without being used. Outside of the office, I’m a keen musician who makes up for lacking talent with excessive enthusiasm.

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