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I wonder if Victorian balloonists experienced an analogue to the Overview Effect astronauts experience. I can't imagine what being the first people to see from
by roywiggins 11y ago
I wonder if Victorian balloonists experienced an analogue to the Overview Effect astronauts experience. I can't imagine what being the first people to see from high above would have been like.
- rogerspace 11y agoThink about how we view the ocean today, versus how people viewed the ocean hundreds of years ago. The same phenomena meant really different things to different groups of people in different cultural contexts and historical moments. The same is true with the view of the earth from space. "The Overview Effect" is the product of cold war total-system thinking; a combination of the gaia hypothsis, the blue marble, and "spaceship earth". Here is a really good paper--Bimm, "Rethinking The Overview Effect" (2014)--about the historical specificity of "overview" an how it is a cultural, rather than natural, product. https://www.academia.edu/5995107/Rethinking_the_Overview_Effect https://www.academia.edu/5995107/Rethinking_the_Overview_Eff...
- roywiggins 11y agoI will give that a read. I've never been comfortable with the "physical effect" argument, but I've only ever seen it presented in pop media as a fait accompli, so it's a relief that there's serious consideration of other explanations.